


As Long as We Say Hello

by TheShinySword



Category: BanG Dream! (Anime), BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, F/F, Future Fic, Goodbye Sex, It's more a drama with sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Phone Sex, Praise Kink, Reunion Sex, Tokyo Incidents Timeline, but it is also a drama about sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26363059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheShinySword/pseuds/TheShinySword
Summary: Tsugumi struggles to find her way as Sayo leaves on Roselia's first major tour. All she can do is countdown the 91 days until Sayo returns.
Relationships: Aoba Moca/Shirasagi Chisato, Hazawa Tsugumi/Hikawa Sayo, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Udagawa Tomoe/Uehara Himari
Comments: 53
Kudos: 209





	1. 91 Days Left

**Author's Note:**

> On the Tokyo Incidents timeline but prior knowledge not necessary.

Tsugumi wakes to soft footsteps on the hardwood floor. She’s not supposed to hear them—those feet mean to sneak out of the room before she wakes—but Tsugumi knows that footfall precedes the avoidant exit of the woman she loves. So Tsugumi lies and Tsugumi waits, letting the summer sun that creeps over her curtains press against her eyelids and listens to the rustling of clothing and drawers until she hears the click of the door latch pulled out of its nest. She sits up and calls out into the half-lit bedroom.

“Sayo-san.”

The doorknob jingles as Sayo Hikawa removes her hand, shoulders falling with an unreleased sigh. For a count of five Tsugumi looks at her back and wonders if she’ll leave without saying goodbye anyway. Then Sayo pulls away and turns Tsugumi with a sad, inevitable sort of smile. “I wanted to let you sleep.”

They never lie to each other, but that doesn’t mean they share their every thought. They don’t have to, not really, after almost six years they’re fluent in each other’s body language and all its subtleties.

Sayo’s hand shifts on the handle of her beat up old suitcase—no one would ever steal such an ugly suitcase she fervently believes—pressing the central button again and again with a dull click. She waits through her nerves. She doesn’t know how to do this but neither does Tsugumi.

“I know.” Tsugumi pushes herself all the way upright with a pillow at her back. The blue and white striped sheet falls away from her bare chest. They’re so long past feeling embarrassed over their naked bodies that Tsugumi hardly thinks anything of it until she sees the way Sayo stiffens as her eyes pass over the story Sayo wrote with lips and teeth over Tsugumi’s body in the night. Cold air bellows from their fan, ticking in an arc over her chest, chilling the bites and bruises that are still so tender. Tsugumi reaches for her neck, fingers passing over a mark she can’t see but remembers vividly enough to make her feel so very hot even with the breeze on her skin.

She shakes away the thought—not the sort of thing to think about when Sayo is about to leave for three months—and opens her arms. “Come here.”

Sayo looks between Tsugumi and the door. She’s the sort to make a pros and cons list for her pros and cons list and the agony of quick decision making grows over her face. “I’ll be late.”

“You think thirty minutes early is late.” Tsugumi stands her ground and adds simply, “Please?”

The suitcase thuds with a plastic crack against the floor. It takes only four steps to cross their tiny bedroom and Sayo makes it in three. Her knees sink onto their mattress. She hovers upright for a moment before giving into gravity and collapses into Tsugumi’s arms, as if she’s already exhausted and returned home and not a scant few hours from boarding a plane and flying away to a country Tsugumi will never see.

It’s hard not to clutch at Sayo’s shirt. Hard not to wrinkle the carefully ironed cloth and cling. Especially as Sayo’s arms worm up Tsugumi’s bare back and around her shoulders. Her fingers tighten as Sayo sinks into Tsugumi’s chest with her forehead pressed at the center of her lover’s collarbone and her eyes screwed shut. Hot breath beats on Tsugumi’s naked skin in panted bursts, the emotions Sayo so kindly tried to keep hidden with her quick exit leaking out with each puff. Tsugumi cradles her girlfriend’s head, careful to avoid ruffling her hair to spare them losing the time Sayo would need to fix it.

Slowly and softly, Sayo pulls her head back just enough to wonder at her handiwork from the night before. There’s a little pride, a little sheepishness, and an infinite well of affection. Her lips flutter against Tsugumi’s chest as she begins to kiss every mark she left behind. The bruise on her hip, the hickey on her chest, the bite mark on her clavicle. Tsugumi’s breathing grows shallow. There’s just no way to keep her lungs full when Sayo kisses up her neck in a teasing curving line. Up and up until their eyes meet and there’s nothing to do but kiss. Tsugumi’s hands fall down Sayo’s back, picking at the hem of her blouse, the back of her nails trailing at the bare flesh hidden underneath. She remembers why Sayo is dressed when Tsugumi is so very naked but it still takes all her willpower not to strip Sayo down to match.

Sayo tugs at Tsugumi’s lower lip, mouth chasing mouth. Tsugumi breaks away to gulp down air before hungry, urgent Sayo takes her back. The afterthought of a moan is all that can sneak out from Tsugumi’s lips as Sayo presses forward, one hand fisting in Tsugumi’s hair as the other runs down her chest until it finds her breast and simply rests there. Sayo’s thumb coaxes her nipple erect with small strokes that leave Tsugumi writhing against her.

Tsugumi squeezes her thighs together under the sheets, not hiding how her legs twist and twitch as Sayo touches her, kisses her, reminds her just how big the hole in her life will be for the next three months. The anticipation of pain hurts but in this moment it can’t be as agonizing as the layer of cotton between the burning at her center and Sayo’s slow roaming hands. There’s no time for teasing.

All she can manage to whimper is “Sayo please.”

Sayo pulls back just a little, resting her forehead against Tsugumi’s as her eyes flick down her girlfriend’s body. They shudder together, each breath reverberating into three.

Finally, Sayo moves her hand under the sheets and traces the curve of Tsugumi’s hip inwards. Her left hand is callused from years of mastering guitar. She’ll spend the next three months showing the world exactly how high Roselia can rise. But for one more minute those callused fingers have a very different job.

Each fingertip is rough, scraping the tender skin where her thighs and groin meet, but the touch feels so good Tsugumi can only moan and grind against her girlfriend, wordlessly begging her to go further. It doesn’t matter how many times Sayo touches her, how many times she pressed Tsugumi into that very bed last night, how many marks she leaves on Tsugumi’s flesh, it will never be enough. It’s a terrifying dissatisfaction but it excites Tsugumi all the same.

“A-ah!” She cries out when Sayo finally cups her, two fingers slipping between her folds and skimming outside Tsugumi’s entrance only once as a warning before pushing inside. Tears form in her eyes as her body preemptively longs for what it already has inside it. She focuses on the sensation of Sayo curling inside, calluses rubbing against Tsugumi’s inner walls, and tries to lose her thoughts in the natural rocking of her hips.

But her mind is too busy. No matter how Tsugumi tries to abandon herself to the feeling of Sayo inside her, she can’t shake the truth that Sayo’s phone will go off at any second to whisk her away from Tsugumi for parts unknown. Her tears threaten to turn bitter and she struggles to hold them back. She wants to see her Sayo off with a smile. She doesn’t want to be remembered as a blubbering mess.

But Sayo makes that so hard. Her thumb covers Tsugumi’s clit—pressing feather lightly before stroking down, down, _down_ —and a strangled sob escapes Tsugumi’s throat. Lighting shoots to the tip of toes. Her hips jerk, her forehead grinds forward into Sayo’s—bangs soaked with sweat. She clutches at Sayo’s back—all hesitation forgotten—as her body tries desperately to cling to pleasure even as her brain tries to swat it away. She groans, barely more than a squeak.

Sayo stills. Tsugumi thrusts uselessly after her—absently worried she’s mistaken the groan for an orgasm. But Sayo pulls her head away, breathes deep into Tsugumi’s hair and leans her lips against the outer rim of Tsugumi’s ear. “I will come back to you.” And she pushes deeper, fingers fully entrenched inside Tsugumi.

She knows her so well. Tsugumi feels so much lighter. Suddenly every pulse she squeezes around Sayo’s fingers is so much more vibrant, more felt. Every thrust and pull sends Tsugumi panting against Sayo’s shoulder, no longer able to worry about keeping her tidy. She has a mouth full of cotton shirt, fists wrinkling the back and she’s probably drooled on Sayo’s pants but she can’t stop now that Sayo’s reminded her of the truth. That Sayo will come back. She has to come back.

With one last curl of Sayo’s fingers and flick over her clit, Tsugumi is undone. She shakes with the release, lungs cruelly denying her air. For a too brief moment, Tsugumi forgets the world outside all the electric sensations coursing through her nerves drawn out by Sayo’s hand. Sayo steadies her other hand at Tsugumi’s back and kisses her down from the high.

Then Sayo’s phone rings with the generic ringtone she refuses to change. Like a q-tip poking too deep down the ear canal over and over again. Sayo pulls away too quickly with an apologetic, mournful glance and pulls her phone from her pocket with her dry hand. “Forgive me, Tsugumi-san.”

Tsugumi trembles with the absence. She pulls the sheet around her chest, hoping it will hide the worst of it. “Go on.”

“Thank you.” Sayo nods with a small smile. “Imai-san?”

The light cotton is suffocating over Tsugumi’s sweat-sticky skin but she keeps it in place, shifting her thighs apart to try to relieve the growing discomfort of the leftover wetness.

“I apologize.” Sayo bows with her phone in hand as if Lisa can see her—not that anyone could ever doubt Sayo’s sincerity. “I’ll be downstairs immediately… Yes. I know I am not late however—” Sayo stares at her phone in shock before turning to Tsugumi. “She hung up on me.”

The fan blows again across Tsugumi, it’s so much colder now. “We’re out of time.”

Sayo sighs slightly, just an elongated exhale. “Yes.” She reaches for her fallen suitcase, first with her left hand and then, with a blush growing on her face, her right. “I—I should wash my hands.”

“Sayo-san!” Despite the solemnity of the moment, Tsugumi can’t help but giggle at Sayo’s priorities. She hopes she’ll never understand how she can love someone so much despite her oddities. Maybe a little because of them too.

Tsugumi swallows down all the feelings she wants to vomit out. She doesn’t want Sayo to remember her without a smile on her face, even if the smile is cracked. “ _Go_.”

“Alright.” Sayo squeezes her eyes shut like a camera shutter before opening them with one last bittersweet smile. Then she clicks open the door and leaves.

Shoot. She totally forgot.

“Wait! Sayo!” Tsugumi jumps up from the bed, pulling the sheet with her.

In an instant, Sayo reappears in the doorframe, hair swaying ahead of her. “Tsugumi?”

“I forgot to say I love you.”

Sayo smiles so warmly Tsugumi can feel it through the sheet, heating up her body toe to tip. “I love you too.”

And then Sayo’s gone. The front door shuts and locks like the shutting of a great tome. It echoes through the apartment or at least through Tsugumi’s mind. She collapses back onto their bed. She reaches out blindly until her hands find Sayo’s pillow. It’s still warm, still smells like her girlfriend but it’s already just a half-hearted imitation of the woman she loves. But it’s all she has for now.

* * *

“That plate looks plenty clean to me, kiddo.”

Tsugumi nearly drops the plate she’s been absently scrubbing circles around, hiding and revealing the name Hazawa Coffee written in curling English characters with a layer of suds on each soapy cycle. She’s not normally absentminded, especially not now that she’s gone from barista to manager (and owner) in training, but her brain is stuck on a JAL flight that should be arriving far away any minute now and the “arrived safely” text she’s waiting to get.

Still, it’s embarrassing to be caught in a clumsy moment, even by her dad. She sets the plate on the drying rack and turns with a stammered, “Sorry!”

Her father smiles fondly and claps her on the back, graying mustache twitching alongside his smile. “Sayo left this morning, huh? We’ll have to make do without her for a while then.”

For 91 days exactly.

Tsugumi looks to the counter and the store lying just beyond. She tries to focus on their chattering customers and their dutiful employee but all Tsugumi can picture is her girlfriend standing rigid in the center on her first day of work, trying to overcompensate for her nerves with perfection. It backfired in that spectacularly bad way things only ever go when you’re trying hard to impress someone—with shattered glasses and soaked patrons and vigorous apologizes. Sayo doesn’t need to do anything to impress Tsugumi, but she loves her all the more for trying.

Her dad leans on the countertop with the slow groan he’s started to make every time he moves. When her parents told her their plans for early retirement back in college she couldn’t imagine how they could possibly be old enough. But decades seemed to pass between every holiday. Every visit brought more pill bottles on the kitchen table and more gray hairs on their heads. And now, in a year, Hazawa Coffee will be hers.

It’s so strange watching her parents grow older as Tsugumi feels exactly the same year to year. She thought going off to college would flip the adult switch in her brain. Then she thought moving in with her girlfriend would, then graduation, then finding a proper adult apartment with a job and yet… she remains the same Tsugumi. At least with Sayo at her side she had some proof of adulthood. Without her…

“She’ll be home soon.” Her dad pats her hand. He’s always been good at reading his daughter’s mind. “You just have to be—what’s that Moca always calls you?”

“Tsuguriffic bossman~,” Moca coos as she passes by, swiping up the next set of orders to deliver from the countertop.

“You have to be Tsuguriffic!” He laughs and stretches backwards with a noisy bone shaking crack. He pats her on the back one more time before returning to the floor to chat with some long time patrons as gray around the temples as he is. Tsugumi wants her parents to retire, even if the thought of running the shop on her own keeps her staring at the ceiling late into the night.

Not on her own. Tsugumi is never _on her own._ Sayo will be back soon and they’ll get back to _their_ lives and _their_ shop and all the dreams they talked about entangled in each other’s arms late at night.

“Okay!” Tsugumi lightly slaps her cheeks and pumps her spirits up with her fists. “Who wants coffee?”

There are chuckles from her patrons but Tsugumi’s embarrassed post hype bow is part of Hazawa Coffee’s charm. Everyone loves the young smiling barista and a few hours later her smile brightens the room again as she checks her phone.

**> We arrived safely. I will call at 9PM tonight. **

* * *

Most of the day Tsugumi tricks herself into thinking Sayo just has the day off. The store gets busy but never unmanageable between the Hazawas and Moca, and Tsugumi’s able to head home a little early after cleaning up.

It’s comfortably warm on Tsugumi’s walk home. By the end of the month the autumn breeze will blow the summer heat away, but for now the days are still long and the walk is still lovely. She grabs some fish and produce at the local market directly in the middle of the few blocks between her workplace and her apartment—carrots are on sale but Tsugumi forgoes them on instinct.

Barely twenty minutes have passed before she’s at her aging apartment building. She unlocks the scratched up front door with one hand, pushing it open with her shoulder, grabs the mail from the box, and bounces up the four flights of stairs to her home.

It’s odd to come home alone to a darkened entryway. Most days she either arrives with Sayo or to Sayo flipping through some music magazine on their couch or hunched over her desk playing that game she loves so much. It’s so quiet like this. Tsugumi feels along the wall for the switch and the apartment flickers to life with an electric buzz.

Their crooked little apartment is made of hallways: a hallway to cook in, a hallway to bathe in, and a hallway to sleep in with a final long and wide hallway connecting them all. Ran called it cramped as she (sort of) helped Tomoe move their things up the stairs and tetris them throughout the apartment—turning and shoving around until somehow every piece of furniture found a place to live. Tsugumi thinks it’s cozy even though they don’t quite have enough things to fill even the most modest of spaces. There are holes along the walls where some decorative tables would go in her mother’s house and the walls are mostly bare save for a few Afterglow and Roselia family photos and some oddities sent by Hina on her travels around the world. But it’s home, even if it suddenly feels a little foreign to her.

Tsugumi prepares dinner quickly, only realizing halfway through she’s made enough for two people with leftovers. She sighs and scoops the extra food into plastic containers. That’s what the refrigerator is for after all.

It’s sort of nice to have a quiet night to herself. Tsugumi draws herself a bath and spoils herself with one of her favorite bath bombs, sending flowers of purple and green blossoming through the water. Sometimes she just likes to sit by the edge of the tub and watch how the water changes before getting in. When Sayo’s home she worries the water will grow cold but alone Tsugumi doesn’t really care and it’s still pleasant when she dips her toes in.

Very pleasant. She sinks easily up to her neck. Her fingers ripple through the water, playing with the streaks of color settling over her body. It’s so warm and comfortable—a bit like being held. If she lets her eyes drift close and her back rest on the wall it’s almost like Sayo is there around her.

Almost…

…

…

The opening guitar riff from _Louder_ joltsTsugumi awake from her accidental aquatic nap. She splashes through the tub with a gasp, sending ripples of lukewarm water streaming over the edge. She’d gotten in for a soak at 8 and somehow hung around until 9. Tsugumi hurries out of the bathtub, throwing on her robe and snatching her phone from the edge of the sink all at once.

The refrain starts again. Tsugumi scrambles to answer, spewing out a greeting despite her lack of breath. “Hello?”

She waits a short eternity for the voice on the other end of the line to speak.

It hasn’t even been a day since they saw each other but she already longs to hear that rich voice without thousands of miles and a phone between them. “Hello, Tsugumi-san.”

“Sayo-san!” Tsugumi pins her phone to her ear with her shoulder as she ties her robe closed and enters their bedroom, falling back on their bed. “Was your trip in okay?”

“I cannot complain. Although Udagawa-san fell asleep on my shoulder during the flight and made it very difficult to enjoy the inflight movie.”

“That sounds a little like a complaint,” Tsugumi teases, rolling onto her side and cradling the phone against her head. “How’s the hotel?”

Sayo pauses. “It’s very lovely. Many excessive water features.”

“In your room?”

“In the lobby. It’s all we’ve seen so far. Imai-san is attempting to get a free upgrade to our lodging.”

There’s a muffled shout in the background.

“It is not going well.” Sayo hums. Tsugumi can almost see Sayo’s smile. “Will you tell me about your day while I wait?”

“Okay.” There’s not much to tell but Tsugumi details it all, down to the sort of fish she had for dinner and her bathtub nap.

“Tsugumi-san. Please be careful bathing while you’re alone,” Sayo’s tone is forcefully even. Still, Tsugumi can hear the edge of panic around her words. “I cannot help you if you run into trouble.”

“Sayo… I’ve taken baths without you before.”

“I— of course.” Sayo admits bashfully after a moment. “I simply worry.”

“I know.” Tsugumi reaches for Sayo’s pillow and pulls it to her chest, wrapping around it tightly and breathing in Sayo’s scent. She almost says “I miss you” but Sayo’s already worried and Tsugumi doesn’t want to add to that when she needs to focus on her tour. So Tsugumi settles on, “I love you.”

Sayo breaths in and whispers back, “I love you too.”

“Sayo!” Lisa’s voice is still faint but clear this time, “We got our keycards! And free wifi!”

“Sounds like you have to go.” Tsugumi works hard to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

“I can call you again tomorrow. That is,” Sayo hurriedly adds, “if you don’t already have other plans. Please don’t let me keep you from your friends.”

“You’re my plans,” Tsugumi giggles. It’s a cheesy sentiment but it’s worth the light embarrassment for soft relieved exhale over the phone. Tsugumi pictures a small smile on Sayo’s face and she knows it’s what Sayo wants to hear. “Tomorrow sounds perfect.”

“At 9 o’clock then.”

“At 9 o’clock.”

There’s a pause where neither one wants to start their goodbye. They hang on the line together, listening to each other breath quietly into the receiver.

“Sayo.” Yukina’s voice suddenly fills the speaker. Yukina has always been good at appearing from nowhere. “Are you ready?”

Tsugumi hurries to speak before Yukina can pull Sayo away. “Go ahead Sayo-san! Goodnight.”

“Alright. Goodnight Tsugumi-san.”

Sayo is gone again.

Tsugumi sighs into Sayo’s pillow, burying her whole face in the comforting smell and pretending it’s warm from Sayo and not her own body.

* * *

Tsugumi feels every second of the first week as they pass by one after another. After the first two nights, Sayo fell into a whirl of work—soundchecks and concerts that left her barely able to even send a text though even in the best of times, Sayo is notoriously awful with messages.

But it’s fine. …It’s manageable.

They’ve been apart before and Tsugumi is not a child. She should be able to manage a few months away from Sayo. She should be able to manage 84 more nights. Just 84 more nights alone in her bed.

Sayo’s smell is already beginning to fade from her pillow.

“Tsugu~ I need a quadruple espresso in two cups~.”

“Right away Moca-chan!” Tsugumi snaps out of her melancholy and back into her Tsuguriffic self. She’s already grabbed the portafilter from the espresso grinder and slid it into the machine by the time her brain catches up to Moca’s little gag. “That’s just two double espressos.”

Moca winks, leaning lazily across the counter and spinning her tray around in her hand. “Ahaha, Moca-chan’s clever scheme uncovered. Don’t tell the customers I charged double.”

“You didn’t!” Tsugumi’s almost entirely positive Moca would never do anything that wasn’t in the shop’s best interest. Almost.

“Caught again~.” Moca holds up her hands. The tray bounces against her elbow. “Just a little joke.”

The espresso machine clicks behind them. A stream of hot water blasts through the expresso and trickles along a T shaped pipe into two tiny mugs. “Please don’t start telling customers to try a shot of espresso in their hot chocolate again.”

“Papa Hazawa put it on the menu as a special~.”

The “Mocha-chan special” had been a surprise success—Moca’s odd ideas tended to be either runaway successes or disasters, all Tsugumi could do was hope for the former.Moca put the shop through its paces in the year since Tsugumi hired her, but Hazawa Coffee never had a more loyal employee. “Two double espressos.” Tsugumi slides the drinks onto Moca’s tray.

“Not exactly right but I think you’re cute enough the customers will forgive you.” Moca disappears with another cheeky wink. Every customer she serves smiles a little bigger in her wake. She never fails to charm.

Tsugumi surveys the day’s crowd and pauses in the back corner booth where someone seems particularly charmed by Moca though only when the barista’s back is turned.Every time Moca glances the blonde customer’s way she buries herself in the stack of papers piled before her.

Moca quickly returns with three more orders and a set of eyes pretending not to watch her back.

“Do you want to take your break?” Tsugumi places the drinks on Moca’s tray while looking over her shoulder with narrowed, confused eyes. She doesn’t entirely understand the way their relationship works but if Chisato makes Moca happy, she’s family.

“Why ever would Moca-chan want to do that?”

In the corner, Chisato discretely slides her eyes to the counter. They dart back as soon as Tsugumi catches her. “Because your girlfriend is visiting?”

Moca gasps. “That wicked woman leaves bruises all up and down poor innocent Moca-chan’s body and you would serve me up like the snack I am?”

“I can see.” She points to the edge of a purple-red hickey sneaking out the collar of Moca’s tiny red robot covered shirt before turning around to finish off the drinks she’s started.

“Eh?” Moca struggles to look at her own collarbone. A faint chuckle echoes from the corner of the store. Moca smiles despite her best efforts. “It’s just a game we like to play, who can ignore the other the longest.”

“Is that fun?” Tsugumi calls over her shoulder as she pours steaming milk into several mugs laid out in a row.

Moca shrugs and leans lackadaisically over the counter with a lazy proud smile. “Dunno. I always lose.”

Tsugumi sets the three orders on Moca’s tray and then, before Moca can turn around, slidesa black tea latte and a “Mocha-chan Special” alongside them.She pauses, then reaches into the small fridge under the counter, pulls out a small teal plastic bento box and sets it on the tray too. “Here.”

“Oh ho~ is that a homemade lunch? Who knew being Tsugu’s tour girlfriend would be this fruitful~? Maybe Moca-chan should say goodbye to her real girlfriend.” Moca sneaks a peek at the back corner table but Chisato is pointedly looking away.

Even dumping her leftovers on Moca each day hardly makes a dent in Tsugumi’s ever increasing food backlog. Every day she swears she’ll skip making dinner, and every day she forgets until she’s in the kitchen with a plastic sack of expirables in her hand. “Take these out, take those to Chisato-san and take your break.”

“Is that an order pretty miss boss lady?” Moca waggles her eyebrows.

With an affectionate and exasperated sigh Tsugumi throws up her hands. “Yes.”

“Moca-chan can’t refuse a direct order from her captain.” Her hand flies up to her forehead in a languid salute. “Wanna get dinner with us tonight?”

Tsugumi smiles at the request but shakes her head. “I can’t. Sayo-san’s calling.”

“Oh ho~ an innocent lover’s call? Or is it a booty call~?” She sweeps up the tray in her hand and starts to mosey backwards.

“Moca-chan! It’s nothing like that.” All Tsugumi wants is to catch up on her girlfriend’s life. That’s it. She won’t let anything else cross her mind.

“Hehe,” Moca winks. “Come out with us this weekend then! Moca-chan won’t take no for an answer.” Moca spins around before Tsugumi can answer, barely jostling her tray, and slips her way through the chairs and tables. She slides a latte to a long time customer, clinks two black coffees down for some teenagers trying to be cool and then makes her way to the corner, presenting her tray like a royal offering.

Tsugumi watches Moca join Chisato at the table. Chisato laughs with her hand laid carefully over her mouth at something Moca says before she’s even sat down and Moca looks at her with the sort of look that reminds Tsugumi why Sayo posted the large “No Photography Allowed” sign by the counter. Moca can try to hide how she feels with her actions and her words, but her eyes can’t stop shouting “I love you” the moment she sees Chisato.

Tsugumi hates how jealous that makes her feel. She’s not used to that nasty little feeling tapping her on the shoulder whenever she sees a happy couple. She’s _used_ to turning to her girlfriend with a shared knowing smile. She’s _used_ to covertly holding hands for a second behind the counter when the mood strikes. She’s _used_ to Sayo. It’s barely been a week and Tsugumi feels like she’s losing her mind.

It’s only been a week. It’s already been a week. Seven days. Who’s counting? (Tsugumi is, desperately.)

* * *

Putting away leftovers has become a puzzle. Tsugumi crouches in front of her fridge looking for a place to store the massive remains of her chicken cacciatore. No matter how much she tries to cut down the proportions, every meal Tsugumi makes could easily serve a family of five. Cooking for one is a foreign concept to all her usual recipe sources—the mommy blogs and internet darlings—and every night Tsugumi fills her refrigerator with more leftovers and her stomach with dread, knowing there aren’t enough days to eat them all. Moca helps with the leftovers but even her stomach has a bottom and the extra portions keep piling up…

Tsugumi’s phone buzzes as she slides aside the fried tofu and reveals a forgotten chicken cutlet. Always another meal. She glances quickly at her phone. It’s 8:50, too early for Sayo’s call. Sayo is as precise with their 9 o’clock phone call as she is with everything, her sound, her coffee, her love makin—

She stuffs the chicken behind Tuesday’s hamburger meat and almost throws the phone in beside it. She slams the door shut with her back before the food can rush out in a table scrap tsunami and sinks down alongside it mortified by her own thoughts.

There’s nothing wrong about thinking about sex, especially not sex with her partner, but it feels like Pandora’s wicked box beckoning her whenever Tsugumi is alone with her thoughts. If she lets herself imagine it, remember it, long for it then the loneliness will surely eat her alive.

The kitchen isn’t wide enough for Tsugumi to extend her legs all the way across the width. Her knees jut out like shark fins against the blue vinyl tiles as she pulls her phone to face and investigates what she’s been sent: A message from Lisa with an image attached.

**> Soundcheck and costume check 4 new venue! Thought you’d want to see ;) ;) ;)**

Lisa is correct.

It’s a picture of Sayo in their new stage costume, Tsugumi assumes taken from Lisa’s vantage on stage while Sayo plays for the sound technicians. But it’s so much more than that.

Sayo looks like the general of some fantasy army, adorned in a deep royal purple double breasted jacket with gold tassels and thread spreading like spiderwebs between gleaming buttons across her chest. There’s a capelet on her shoulder, probably pinned to keep out of her way but it seems like at any minute she could rip it off and unleash some hidden potential it conceals. The jacket tapers down along her waist to reveal itself to have been a dress all along with a flared skirt cut so Sayo’s impossibly high boots and their complex laces can steal focus.

The costume is Rinko’s finest work in Tsugumi’s immensely biased opinion but it’s nothing without the woman inside it.

Sayo is always beautiful—even when she wakes up too early after staying up too late—but there’s a fierce intensity drawn on her face with thick lines that Tsugumi hasn’t seen since they were teenagers, the last time Roselia performed together regularly. That look on Sayo’s adult face… She’s gaunter now with a chin like a dagger and the look accents every sharp point of her face. This is the wolf of Roselia unleashed again. She’s not her Sayo… but Tsugumi sort of wishes she was.

At the very least the picture does absolutely nothing to help with the thoughts Tsugumi is trying to keep at bay. Roselia’s Sayo quickly devours her thoughts. She’s behind Tsugumi, with those long guitarist fingers pulling back her shirt, glistening fangs over her shoulder—Tsugumi’s not exactly sure when Sayo became a vampire but she can’t help but let the fantasy keep playing until—

 _Louder_ rings out of her phone and the picture disappears behind an incoming call: Sayo Hikawa.

Once again Tsugumi hurries to answer her phone. She whispers “Hello?” and holds her breath as she waits for Sayo.

“Hello, Tsugumi-san.” Sayo’s voice is a hot bath after a long day. Tsugumi closes her eyes and lets herself soak in the warm depths of her girlfriend’s voice. “Is now a good time?”

“Of course it is, Sayo-san.” Tsugumi relishes a reason to say her name. It falls so nicely from her lips—a name like a perfect sigh. She eases the image of that other Sayo out of her mind and replaces it with her Sayo’s gentle smile. “Where are you today?” Tsugumi wants to know everything that’s happened in the week but they have to start somewhere.

There are shifting sounds over the phone. “Taipei. We had our sound check today, it went very well. I think it will be a lovely series of shows.”

“All your shows are wonderful Sayo-san.” Tsugumi wishes she could see that Sayo in action again, stalking the stage in that costume. If she’s stunning in a still image then in person—Tsugumi decides not to imagine that any further.

“I—” A pause. “Thank you Tsugumi-san.”

Tsugumi wriggles against the wooden cabinet, trying to find some comfort from her growing body heat against the cold kitchen surfaces. “Are you in your hotel room?”

“I am.” Tsugumi imagines Sayo on a hotel bed somewhere, lying over the sort of brightly patterned comforter no one would ever buy willingly. “Minato-san is here as well.” Tsugumi adds Yukina to the image as well, lying on a matching bed as rigidly as a corpse. She’s never seen Yukina sleep but there’s no way she sleeps in anything other than her usual clothes—trying to imagine Yukina in pajamas feels perverse like imagining an elder god in a negligee. “Wasn’t Yukina-san staying with Lisa-san?”

Sayo grunts, probably with a stretch. “Imai-san kicked Minato-san out for her ‘privacy’ so we decided to share a room instead.”

“You don’t need the privacy?” Tsugumi teases.

“Not from Minato-san.” The answer comes adorably quickly. Something about their closeness is comforting. Maybe it’s knowing there are people who care as much for Sayo as Tsugumi’s friends care for her.

“Not even when you… talk to me?” It’s as close to flirting as Tsugumi can manage and saying it out loud sends her melting onto the floor, feet kicking up over the lower cabinets and onto the edge of the countertop.

Sayo hums in thought. “There is nothing I could say to you that I would be embarrassed for her to hear.”

Tsugumi bites her lower lip and borrows the sort of lilting flirty voice Moca uses on her girlfriend and customers when she’s looking for a tip, “Nothing at all?”

“Tsugumi-san, do you have a secret you wish to keep from Minato-san?” Sayo asks with the easy serenity of a woman who suspects nothing.

“Of course not,” Tsugumi says, shoving the topic away with only a little disappointment that her girlfriend is so oblivious. “Tell me about your week?”

“Of course.”

It’s so cold on the kitchen floor as Tsugumi listens to Sayo talk. She relishes the fragment of mundanity that comes from listening to Sayo talk about week’s happenings, even when those happenings are soundchecks in thousand seat theaters and concerts that receive rave international reviews.There are little stories along the way, told in the wonderfully perfunctory way Sayo speaks: Ako and Rinko hunting for an internet cafe for a limited NFO event that Sayo absolutely did not participate in, Lisa insisting they get a little culture in and accidentally leading them across a series of chain fast food restaurants, the band almost leaving Yukina behind fast asleep in a taxi.

Her toes curl around the counter top, picking at the tiles in an odd upside down beckon. Tsugumi is so glad Sayo is doing well, so glad that Sayo is happy, and silently realizes, as Sayo continues to speak, a little disappointed that Sayo is having so much fun without her.

It’s not that Tsugumi wants Sayo to suffer. She doesn’t even want Sayo to feel the way Tsugumi does when she sees Sayo’s empty side of the bed. But she wants Sayo to miss her. It’s a nasty, selfish impulse, so Tsugumi buries it deeply behind her smile.

“Tsugumi-san?” Sayo calls out from the phone. “Are you there?”

“Mmhmm,” Tsugumi nods even though Sayo can’t see. “I was just thinking—” _I miss you—_ “how fun it all sounds.”

Sayo’s on a magical trip and Tsugumi reminds herself not to ruin it. It’ll get easier. It has to get easier.

* * *

It’s a memory and a dream in one. It has to be a dream because reality can’t look like this—underexposed and overexposed at once—but the scene is too familiar to be made up ofwhole cloth.

Tsugumi chops up some vegetable for dinner. The vegetable flickers in her mind. It’s a pepper, it’s an onion, it’s a tomato—though not a carrot, never a carrot. Half a dozen different vegetables pass over the little wooden cutting board set at the apex of her half a hallway of a kitchen.

There’s movement behind her. Their home is too small for sneaking but Tsugumi pretends not to notice anyway. She still gasps for show when Sayo’s arms wrap around her, lifting Tsugumi just slightly against her chest and resting her head on Tsugumi’s shoulder.

Sayo breathes in deeply, squeezing her girlfriend tighter but letting her continue to cook. Like a ship on gentle waters, Sayo rocks idly back and forth as Tsugumi prepares their dinner. The room moves with Sayo’s motion—Sayo is the world and the world is Sayo.

Everything stops with Sayo sighs—quiet enough that if Tsugumi didn’t know her every sound she’d never notice. The real Tsugumi—the Tsugumi who remembers—knows when she is. She knows what’s on Sayo’s mind. The dream Tsugumi waits for Sayo to tell her.

“Imai-san thinks we’re ready to go on tour.”

Tsugumi keeps a tight grip on her knife but it feels as though she’d dropped it on her foot. She continues to cut with a shake in her voice. “You’ve been on tour before.”

The Udagawa family station wagon rolls bumpily across the counter’s tiles and crushes Tsugumi’s tomato slices under its wheels. Their old substitution for a tour bus, driven across Japan to short gigs in growing venues. Tiny Sayo waves from the driver’s seat with her band strapped in behind her as the full bodied Sayo Hikawa slides her hand underneath the waistband of Tsugumi’s pants.

That’s not how the real Sayo delivered the news, but dream Sayo wants things to be felt more than heard.

“A real tour.” Her fingers unbutton Tsugumi’s slacks, tugging down the zipper so she has the space to reach inside. “South-East Asia.”

“Sayo.” Tsugumi pauses cutting, ignoring how Sayo rubs down her underwear. “How long?”

Silence. Her hand is still. “Three months.”

Chop. Her knife resumes it’s work, viciously carving away slices of an onion with no regard to methodology.

“Tsugumi-san?”

Chop. Chop. Chop.

“Tsugumi-san.”

Chop! Ch— “Ow!”

The knife slips too close to her fingers and nicks the tip. Tsugumi shakes out her hand, disturbing the small trail of blood down her middle finger into a zig zagged path to her palm.

“Tsugumi!” Sayo jumps into action, whirling Tsugumi around. She brings Tsugumi’s hand to her lips and takes the bleeding finger into her mouth.

“S-Sayo-san!?” It’s not real so there’s no pain. It’s not real so there’s no warmth. But she’s so close to almost feeling both—the pain melting away into the soft, warm suckle of Sayo’s mouth. “You don’t have to do that! I have a first aid kit right here…”

Sayo releases her finger. The wet digit trips over her lip. “Tsugumi.” Sayo sinks to her knees.

Like a jump cut in a movie Tsugumi suddenly finds her pants are gone and her girlfriend kneels before her in eager supplication. Nothing is how Tsugumi remembers it. Except for the words. Those are exactly the same.

“Tell me not to go and I will stay.” The dream Sayo presses forward into Tsugumi’s crotch, mouthing the words into her most tender flesh. Tsugumi wants to feel it so badly. She’s on the edge of the sensation. But…

The sound bounces all around Tsugumi, echoing inside her until the next sentence bursts out her own mouth. “You have to go. You’re Roselia’s guitarist.”

“That is not what I asked.” She nuzzles, she licks. Tsugumi feels the agonizing ghost of Sayo’s touch.

Then the kitchen bursts apart. Countertops, cabinets and appliances whirl into the unknown. There’s nothing beneath her hands, nothing for her to hold onto as Sayo continues her work, nothing for her feet to stand on. But before she can fall, another pair of arms surround her. One hand clings to her waist, the possessively climbs up her chest. Tsugumi cranes her head to see who’s joined them but Sayo is there too. She smirks over Tsugumi’s shoulders with those gleaming gold buttons and that fierce intensity in her features. The guitarist of Roselia is behind her. Her girlfriend is between her legs.

There’s no denying what Tsugumi said the night Sayo asked if she could leave. Tsugumi whimpers. “You should go.”

Roselia’s Sayo whispers in her ear with a raw and husky growl, “There are such heights Roselia has yet to reach.”

Her Sayo looks up with glistening lips and smiles. “I’ll take you higher first.”

But Tsugumi falls.

Tsugumi wakes up with Sayo's pillow in her arms, confused slick thighs, and a desperate wish to turn back time and scream no.


	2. 70 Days Left

Fall sneaks into Hazawa Coffee before Tsugumi realizes the summer has gone. It starts with the stiff breeze parading through the door with every new guest—blowing in leaves that need to be quickly swept outside lest they pile on the welcome mat as an impromptu decoration. Then pumpkin spice makes its way onto their specials’ board with a little help from the mad scientist Moca-chan and her wild experiments (Scones: Delicious! Egg sandwich: Not so much!). Then suddenly the sun begins to set before the store is closed and it’s been three weeks since Tsugumi last held Sayo.

Tsugumi isn’t completely bereft. There’s talking—as much as they can as often as they can which is only an awful painful two times a week—and secretive photos from Lisa. And dreams. There are a lot of dreams. So many Tsugumi struggles to remember the last time she had a truly comfortable night’s sleep, one not interrupted by lewd visions of her girlfriend and highly inappropriate usages of stage costuming. But those will surely stop soon, her brain isn’t so imaginative as to invent another seventy days of erotic fantasies.

Just thinking the phrase makes Tsugumi want to dive under the countertop just in case there are any psychics around sensing her inappropriate thoughts.

…Are they inappropriate thoughts? Fantasizing about her long term romantic partner isn’t exactly the height of taboo but with Sayo away it feels more… naughty.

Another word that sends Tsugumi to the ground, frantically sorting cups into their shelves and avoiding Moca’s knowing smirk. Moca always knows, somehow,and the only other person around when they close up shop is even worse.

The doorbell tinkles. Tsugumi bursts up from her crouch to tell their new guest that the store is closed when she hears the exhausted sigh that precedes Himari’s collapse into her usual counter seat and the thud of her heels hitting wood as she kicks them off.

There’s one last cup of Hazawa Coffee coffee waiting and Moca slips behind Tsugumi to deliver it to Himari’s hands before anyone’s said hello. It’s a lot like being back in high school—so much is like being back in high school these days—but instead of a school uniform Himari’s in the pencil skirt and blazer of her office’s dress code.

Himari sighs with the weight of the world on her shoulders—or at least the weight of an entry level job at a massive conglomerate doing something no one, including Himari, quite understands—and sinks into her cup. “My job sucks.”

“Your job sucks,” Moca agrees as she wipes down the counter save for a Himari shaped spot in the center. “You should quit your shitty job.”

“I should quit my shitty job!” Himari sits up straight, slamming down her hands. The sugar packets jump in their holder, the coffee rocks in the mug and spills slightly onto the counter. Moca dries it before Himari even notices. Himari’s bravado fades. “Should I quit my shitty job?”

Tsugumi looks up from the set of glasses she’s drying. “You should do whatever feels right Himari-chan.” She sets the cleaned cups back on their shelves. “And what you can afford to do.” It’s a boring, grown up answer to a boring, grown up problem.

“I’m never gonna quit this shitty job.” Himari’s wedding ring clinks as she wraps her hand around her mug. “Tomoe can’t support us on her salary.”

“Don’t worry Hii-chan I’ll ask for a raise and pay aaalll the rent.” Moca drapes herself over Himari, intentionally messing up Himari’s laboriously straightened hair with her chin. She grins at Tsugumi, “Tsugu~ give Moca-chan a biiig raise okay?”

Tsugumi smiles and chuckles and refills Himari’s cup before setting the kettle in the sink. “I don’t think that’s in our budget.”

“Please.” Moca clasps her hands around Himari’s shoulders, blocking her face. “I have two hungry kids to feed. They eat nothing but ramen and each other.”

“MOCA!” Himari shrugs Moca off her back with flaming red cheeks. “Jeez. I can’t believe you.”

“Yes you can.”

“Yes I can.”

Tsugumi turns away to finish up the last end of day chores in the kitchen as her friends playfully bicker and poke at one another. Sometimes their conversations are so familiar as to feel surreal. Their clothes are different, their faces have changed but there are times Tsugumi forgets she spent four years away from them at college. It feels as though she graduated high school, blinked, and then all of the sudden was 23 and expected to have it together.

Except when Sayo is home Tsugumi _does_ have it together. Tsugumi has the girlfriend, the job, the future laid out in front of her. It’s just her girlfriend’s absence gnawing away at the order of her life that makes her feel so lost. That’s all it is. It’s temporary.

“Tsugu! You gotta see this!” Himari’s phone pushes Tsugumi’s doubts back as it’s thrust into her face.

“Okay Himari-chan, okay.” She nudges it back down a touch but let’s Himari show her whatever it is that’s got her so excited. “…Your breakfast looks really good?”

Tsugumi’s not sure why Himari’s holding up a photo of some pancakes with the caption “Ultra Yum” but the tweet has a few dozen likes so who is she to judge what matters to the internet?

“Nooo!” Himari squints at the phone and flicks down the screen. “This video!”

Tsugumi has no idea what she’s looking at.

Well, no. That’s not quite right. It’s a video on Twitter, she gets that, and the person in the video is unmistakably Sayo but… “Why is this under your tweet?”

“It’s a fancam! Look!”

Tsugumi is looking. She couldn’t stop if she wanted to. A crackling rendition of the very middle of “Determination Symphony” bursts from the speakers as the video comes to life. It’s amateurishly shot—the footage blurs in and out of focus as the person shooting waves their hand to follow Sayo as she stalks the stage but it hardly matters. The new Roselia outfits are stunning, like they’re generals of some fantasy army adorned in medals and capes of royal purple. The dignity matches Sayo’s face, fierce but confident with a smirk on her lips. Her hands speed across her guitar as she walks stage right into Yukina.

The video is so closely zoomed in that Yukina seems to appear from nowhere like a witch appearing before Sayo to measure her worth. Yukina’s hand reaches out and the tips of her finger just barely glance Sayo’s chin, lifting her up as if inspecting her for flaws. Of course, Yukina finds none.

The video repeats. Tsugumi’s face is on fire.

The chin lift has been a Roselia staple for years—a little move that drives the crowd wild. Tsugumi’s never thought much of it—she’s even teasingly done it to Sayo—until right this second.

Sayo’s gaze is so intense and focused even for Sayo, a woman who handles her grocery shopping with the same intensity as her guitar solos, and it has… quite the effect on Tsugumi. She’s struck with the desire to look that Sayo in the eye—with sweat pouring down her face and such confidence in her fingertips—and see her kneel.

“Tsugu, are you okay?” Moca is at her side pressing the back of her hand into Tsugumi’s forehead. “You got really flushed there for a sec. Unless…” Her eyes flick between Tsugumi and the screen and then her lips curl so hard they almost spiral. “Oh ho ho ho.”

Moca figures it out, because Moca always figures it out, but Himari looks cluelessly between her friends and her phone. “What? What’s wrong with Tsugu?”

“Our Tsugu is just a biiig fan of a certain guitarist.”

Himari rolls her eyes and pulls back her phone. Tsugumi tries not to follow the sight of Sayo disappearing into Himari’s pocket. “Yes Moca, Tsugu’s a fan of her girlfriend.” Her eyebrows pop up as she clues in. “Oh! _Oh_.”

Himari’s smile is suddenly just as sinisterly delighted as Moca’s. There’s a certain dynamic to days with just the three of them, without Ran and Tomoe to rescue Tsugumi from Moca’s teasing and Himari’s insatiable lust for gossip. Though it is fun to be able to talk about romance and sex without worrying about sending Ran into an anaphylactic shock.

Tsugumi sighs, resting her elbows over the counter. The video probably gave her brain enough fuel for a dozen more dreams. Lucky (?) her. “I’ve been having dreams about… _that_ Sayo.”

Himari’s smile collapses into confusion. “Tsugu, it’s not weird to have dreams about your own girlfriend.”

“Perhaps sweet Tsugumi has been having night visitations of a more naughty variety?” Moca’s eyebrows waggle as she sits down next to Himari. “Tsugu as we get older—”

Tsugumi shakes her head, too jumbled to respond to Moca’s poking. “I’ve been having dreams about _that_ Sayo. The performer. The one on stage.” It’s so embarrassing to say out loud but the dreams haven’t stopped.

Moca clears her throat, flicking through a pretend clipboard in her hands. “Doctor Udagawa, can I get your opinion on our patient’s status?”  
Himari mimics Moca. “Absolutely Doctor Aoba. I can only diagnose her with one thing…”

“Horny.” They say at once, their stern doctorly expressions devolving into giggles.

“You’re just horny and miss your girlfriend,” Himari takes Tsugumi’s hand and squeezes. Her voice is so loving and compassionate even as her words make Tsugumi want to dive out the window. “Wild guess, you haven’t told Sayo-san any of this?”

“It’s a bit embarrassing.” The understatement of the year.

“Tsugu~,” Moca sings. “You’re grown ups. You should tell your girlfriend you want her to rail you in her stage costume.”

“Or that you want to rail her. No judgement!” Himari adds, completely misreading the shock on Tsugumi’s face.

Moca shrugs. “At least have some mind blowing phone sex while you wait.”

“That’s a real thing?” Tsugumi always assumed phone sex was made up as a bit of fictional titillation.

Himari and Moca look devastated on Tsugumi’s behalf.

“You haven’t seen your girlfriend in three weeks and you haven’t had phone sex yet?” Moca shakes her head with pitying disbelief. “If Chisato goes on set for a week we’re going at least once a day.”

“Ah the honeymoon phase~” Himari sighs, raising her coffee cup to her lips in an attempt at mature nostalgia. “Such a long time ago.”

“Hii-chan, I share a wall with you. You and Tomo-chin never left.”

“Moca!” Coffee spills from Himari’s cup onto the counter. Tsugumi decides to let it pool for now.

“I have heard you come so many times it feels like we’ve had a threesome.”

CaTHUNK. The coffee cup hits the floor. Moca cackles as she wanders off for the mop and Himari rips napkins from the dispenser with a cherry tomato colored face.

Tsugumi feels the same color growing on hers, though she’s as frustrated as she is embarrassed. Her friends have always been open about their sex lives. Or rather, Himari has always been open about her sex life which makes Tomoe open by default and Moca has spent the past year loudly—with more than a little insecurity creeping out between sexcapades—catching up to them. Ran remains a mystery to everyone—including herself—but she seems happy enough with her flowers and that’s what matters. Tsugumi isn’t particularly prudish or shame-filled but sometimes when Moca and Himari start talking she feels like she’s seventeen again and staring at her friends’ backs.

“I’m sorry Tsugu, was that too much?” Himari dabs at her skirtwith her fistful of napkins.

“It’s fine!” Tsugumi says so cheerfully even she knows it’s forced. “I just… I don’t know if Sayo would be interested in that sort of thing.” How would she even bring that up? Though the idea was appealing.

“There’s no way Sayo doesn’t miss you like crazy Tsugu. She’s been in love with you since the day you met!”

“Not the _day_.” Now she’s pleasantly embarrassed and remembering the earnest young woman who used to wait for hours inside her coffeeshop.

“The day. Seriously.” Himari gets that ‘just like in my shoujo manga’ look in her eyes. “Your girlfriend’s a rockstar and all she wants is to come home to you. I mean she’s basically the biggest act on the continent! Look at all these videos!” A quick search for Roselia on her phone reveals dozens, hundreds even, of videos on twitter—all short clips focused on one or two band members.

Tsugumi’s brain struggles to take it all in. “That’s… a lot.”

“Roselia’s popular! And—” Himari delivers the final blow with the ignorant smile of someone who thinks she’s giving good news—“they’re only gonna get bigger.”

It hits Tsugumi so hard the room spins. This isn’t going to be the only Roselia tour.

This is the _first_ Roselia tour.

* * *

Why did she make soup? It seemed like a good idea at the grocery store when Tsugumi was faced with a sale on leeks and the dropping temperature but now she’s in front of her refrigerator with a full container of potato and leek soup—stored in the brand new Tupperware she bought because all her existing containers are filled with piles and piles of future mold snacks—unsure where she can possibly store all this soup.

Tsugumi is about five minutes from having a panic attack over the soup. Of course it isn’t _about_ the soup. It’s about the call. The phone call. The phone call with her girlfriend. The phone call with her loving, wonderful straight laced girlfriend where she’s going to debase herself and ask if Sayo is willing to have sex. On the phone.

The phone rings. Tsugumi flings the soup away from her chest and into the sink where the container cracks open and leaks out the potato sludge. At least that’s one way to get rid of leftovers. She rushes for the living room. She’s never had phone sex before but she’s pretty sure the kitchen floor is not the place for it. She hasn’t even had regular sex on the kitchen floor.

The living room doesn’t feel right either. She decides to head into her bedroom instead, phone still ringing in her hand, and gets sort of comfortable on the bed. Sort of. Everything feels sticky. The phone most of all.

Tsugumi finally answers. “Hello?”

There’s a relieved sigh on the other end. “Hello Tsugumi-san. Am I interrupting something? Please do not let me keep you.”

“Please keep me,” tumbles out of Tsugumi’s mouth.

Sayo makes a startled little noise that quickly evolves into a happy hum.

“I mean, you’re not keeping me from anything.” _Because you’re all I want. “_ How was your day?”

Sayo relaxes. “It was excellent.” She begins to detail every part of the week since their last call, all of Ako’s antics and Lisa’s plans. The particularities of Yukina and the sweet thoughtfulness of Rinko. Sayo is so loved and cared for over there, it eases Tsugumi’s heart just a little.

Tsugumi relaxes into her pillow, pulling Sayo’s pillow to her chest to catch the last whiffs of Sayo’s scent. There’s no opening in the conversation to suggest phone sex—not that Tsugumi has any idea what the natural segue between “how was your day” and “please describe intimate sexual acts over the phone to me” is.

Sayo stops talking for a second. Before Tsugumi can ask what’s wrong, Sayo does the same. “Are you alright?”

The concern is so evident even from so many miles away that Tsugumi feels a little guilty.

“Um…” Tsugumi tells herself over and over that she’s talking to Sayo—the one person she can say anything to—but it doesn’t help the body wide embarrassment she tries to bury into a pillow. “I’m fine! I just—” _miss you, need you— “_ Have you ever thought about phone sex?”

The line goes dead. Tsugumi rushes to make sure Sayo “Former Head of the Disciplinary Committee” Hikawa didn’t hang up the phone in shame over the sudden, shocking question. Her shaky breathing assures Tsugumi that she’s still there but that brings Tsugumi little comfort. What’s running through Sayo’s mind right now? Is she wondering what wonton—wanton? Wonton? URG one’s a food and one isn’t and Tsugumi can’t figure out which is which because Sayo probably hates both—

“I’m sorry Sayo-san, that was silly of me to bring up—”

“Tsugumi.” Sayo has a way of calming Tsugumi with a single word spoken with the sort of gentle forcefulness that could stop a stampede. “I have also thought about that.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.” Sayo’s voice is starting to lower.

Boldness overtakes Tsugumi, she begins to ask, “Sayo, can we—”

CaChunk.

Somewhere in Sayo’s room a door shuts. A muffled subdued voice sneaks into Tsugumi’s ear. “Sayo? The vending machine did not have fries but I got you potato chips.” A faint plastic rustling. “They share the same spirit.”

“Minato-san?” Sayo’s voice jumps back to its usual registry. “I am on the phone.”

“Is that Tsugumi? Move aside, I’ll speak to her as you eat your chips.”

Sayo squeaks. “M-Minato-san?”

A thunking shuffling sound scratches through the phone followed by a loud huff. Tsugumi tentatively asks, “Sayo-san?”

“Incorrect, it is Yukina.”

“Yukina-san!” Tsugumi scrambles upright even though there’s no video. “How are you?”

Yukina takes a long time to consider the question. “Adequate. This hotel does not meet the standards for Roselia but Sayo is smiling now so it must have some accommodation that meets her expectations.”

“Is that so?” Tsugumi blushes, wondering if Yukina knows what she’s saying.

Sayo’s muffled voice squeaks in the background, “Minato-san!”

“Eat your chips Sayo.” Loose crunching noises follow Yukina’s stern order.

Tsugumi holds back her laughter. “How is the tour going Yukina-san?”

“Sayo has performed very admirably thus far.” Yukina knows exactly what Tsugumi is interested in. “You should be very proud of her.”

“I am.” Tsugumi’s smile feels comfortable on her face. “I always am.”

“Excellent.” Yukina makes a satisfied huff. “You are, as always, an exemplary partner worthy of Roselia.”

Tsugumi bites her lip. That’s right. She’s Sayo’s partner. She’s proud to be Sayo’s partner. That means she has to be strong. She has to be worthy of someone as special as Sayo.

Yukina takes Tsugumi’s silence as affirmation. “I shall return you to Sayo now.”

Another set of scrambling sounds. “Tsugumi-san!” Sayo sounds concerned as though Tsugumi had just encountered a wild animal.

“I’m still here.”

A relieved sigh. “I am sorry, Minato-san can be very forceful.”

“Yukina-san is one of a kind,” Tsugumi giggles. “Did you like your chips?”

“I did, they were salt and vinegar flavored. Though I do find it odd that they specify the salt when all chips have significant quantities of sodium in them.”

“I never thought about that.”

“I have a lot of time to think about these little things now.” Sayo’s voice grows hushed. Tsugumi can picture her trying to shield the phone from Yukina. “About what we were talking about before…”

“Oh! Um. Yes.” Tsugumi’s face burns. “Perhaps… some other time.”

“It will be tricky with Minato-san around.” Sayo sounds pensive. Tsugumi can’t tell if she thinks Yukina is an obstacle or an excuse.

“I’ll… I’ll let you go.”

“Tsugumi?”

“It’s late! I mean—you have a show tomorrow so so—goodnight!”

“Wait. Tsugumi-san.”

Tsugumi hovers over the hang up button, waiting as Sayo asked.

“Goodnight.” Sayo’s voice lowers again—the tone just for Tsugumi. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

* * *

Tsugumi’s lost backstage. Which backstage doesn’t really matter. She’s been in so many venues and there’s a point where, big or small, they all blend together into bright halls that lead to even brighter dressing rooms. Every time she turns a corner all she finds is another matching hallway. She’s turned in on herself three times already but still the halls grow and grow in the infinity of this backstage without a stage.

She’s going to be late. Doesn’t know what for but she’s going to be late and anxiety grabs her heart with its scaly hand and digs its claws into her chambers. There’s no way to tell if she’s close to her destination. Less than no way when she doesn’t know what it is she’s looking for. But Tsugumi can’t stop.

Twang.

There’s a note. It’s soft, distant but it’s something different, something Tsugumi can follow.

Twang, Twang, Twang.

She hurries along the corridors as the notes become a song she knows so well played in solo acoustic. The music grows louder—a determined symphony boiled down to a somber, slowed song.

A door appears in front of her—black with a gold star glued to the center. The music pours out from the bottom. Tsugumi takes the handle in hand and pushes open, hoping she’s right about who she’ll find on the inside.

She knows the room well. The old CiRCLE dressing room with it’s walls full of mirrors and Sayo Hikawa practicing in the corner. It’s been years since they’ve been in that room together. Sayo with her guitar and feathers in her hair and Tsugumi… Oh!

Tsugumi realizes she’s been in her stage costume the whole time—the coziest one with the hoodie and the headband and that cute yellow dress she lost somewhere between Tokyo and Kyoto. It’s nice to see it again, reflected infinitely across the three mirrored walls.

She waits for Sayo to notice her and takes in the twangy music. She loves the sounds of Sayo’s unplugged guitar. Not just because there’s a certain charm to the wiry sound of amplified steel strings, but because it feels so private. Intimate.

Sayo looks up, their eyes meet. The guitar stops.

Sayo is gone.

Before Tsugumi can call out, hands wrap around her torso and squeeze.

There she is in the mirror. Arms wrapped with possessive intent. Golden eyes glaring over her shoulder. Sayo Hikawa from Roselia.

Silk gloved hands cover Tsugumi’s. It’s that new costume again. You can’t play guitar in gloves, Tsugumi knows that but it’s perfect like this. She doesn’t care. Sayo’s going to take care of her, Sayo’s going to let her into that secret world of hers.

Sayo bends Tsugumi over the table with the flat of her hand and keeps her there with a thrust of her hips and the press of her hands. She doesn’t need either. Tsugumi is made of raw clay, waiting for Sayo to mold her. Fill her. Hollow her even. To do whatever Sayo’s whims demand.

There is an infinity of Sayos and Tsugumis in the mirror, bouncing in the reflection. Infinite Sayos dominating infinite Tsugumis and every one of them wants it.

Sayo roughly pulls off the Afterglow sweatshirt. Tsugumi delights in the difference, in a Sayo who doesn’t worry about folding clothes as soon as they’ve left the body. Those gloved hands skim Tsugumi’s surface like a stone on water, soft hops denying her the pleasure of constant touch. Sayo’s lips are on her exposed back, her hands find Tsugumi’s thighs, she is poised to take everything that is Tsugumi. But—

“Sayo.” A voice as dry as cereal without milk cracks every mirror in the room, splintering Sayo and Tsugumi into their separate fragments.

Tsugumi is forgotten as Yukina Minato appears behind them, pulling Sayo into her own shard of mirror and abandoning Tsugumi to cold isolation.

Yukina pulls the jacket from Sayo’s shoulders and throws it to the abyss. She’s so much smaller than her guitarist but Sayo is obedient and lets Yukina do as she pleases. She looks to Yukina with needy eyes as Yukina raises her fingers to Sayo’s lips. “Would you like a potato chip?”

There’s a perfectly shaped chip in her hand. The kind you only ever see in commercials.

Sayo opens her mouth wide. Yukina lays the potato chip on her tongue and pulls her hand away just in time to avoid the nip of Sayo’s teeth. Sayo chews with loud obnoxious wet noises as if she’s putting on an act for some commercial. “Thank you Yukina.”

Tsugumi wants to stand up, she wants to stake a claim on her girlfriend. But she can’t move, can’t even turn around to look at them. She can only watch Sayo’s reflection in the fractured mirror.

“Sayo. I need you.” Yukina’s hands roam down Sayo’s front, popping open buttons and slipping into her shirt as Yukina smirks at Tsugumi through her reflection.

Sayo turns to Yukina with a cruel smile, stroking her leader’s cheek and then staring down mockingly at Tsugumi as Tsugumi stares back in the mirror:

“Sorry Tsugumi but Yukina needs me more.”

Tsugumi wakes up covered in sweat with a painfully pounding heart. Yukina has to go.

* * *

“So…” Tsugumi flops onto the bed, clinging to her old keyboard pillow like she’s back in her high school bedroom again. She’s moved a lot of those old pillows back onto her bed just so the queen bed doesn’t seem to lonesome. “Do you think you can do it?”

“Talk to Minato-san?” Ran laughs once on the other end of the phone. “Don’t worry, I have plenty of things to say to her.” How Ran truly feels about Yukina is a mystery to everyone not named Moca, but when Tsugumi asked Ran to help occupy her for an hour or so Ran was easily persuaded.

“Thank you Ran-chan! I’ll text you in a few minutes when it’s time!”

“No problem but Tsugumi… it’s not my business but…” Ran hesitates. There’s a long pause on the line. “Never mind. I’ll be waiting.” She hangs up.

There are questions on Tsugumi’s mind but she pushes them away because there are much more important things to focus on. After all, she’s about to have phone sex.

Oh no, she’s about to have phone sex. Knowing Sayo is actually into it almost makes it MORE frightening. It’s almost as nerve wracking as the first time she and Sayo did it—in her old bedroom after considerable research and discussion and agonizing on the part of both parties until she finally took Moca’s advice and just opened her shirt, Sayo took it from there.

Sayo… She was so nervous that first time. And the second. And really for the entire first year after they started having sex. So afraid that she would hurt Tsugumi or prove inadequate when all Tsugumi ever wanted was Sayo.

All she still wants is Sayo.

Tsugumi’s heart thumps. Her lower lip stings between her teeth. A chill passes through her body. Just the thought of Sayo—gently guiding Tsugumi through her pleasure—is enough to…

_Louder_ rings out from Tsugumi’s phone. She’s grateful Sayo is always timely.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Tsugumi-san.” There she is. Sayo’s calm timbre isn’t doing to ease the slow burning fire Tsugumi’s starting to feel between her legs.

“Sayo-san. Is Yukina-san around?” Maybe there’s a chance they’re already free.

“Hello Tsugumi.” Sayo must be holding her phone out to her roommate. Tsugumi tries to smother the silly jealousy that pops up in her chest, entirely stemming from a dream that Yukina did not force into her head.

“Hi Yukina-san,” Tsugumi greets back as she pulls her phone from her ear and pops into a text thread.

**> Okay! Now!**

“We performed very well last night Tsugumi-san.” Sayo says without any suspicion. “You would have been very proud.”

“I’m always proud of you Sayo-san.” Any minute now…

A chorus of cat sounds contorted into a sort of song interrupts their call. Tsugumi stifles her giggle.

“Minato-san?” Sayo calls out over the squeak of a hotel bed and a hurried “Mitake-san?” from Yukina.

“Yukina-san?” Tsugumi plays along.

There’s a loud slam and click as the hotel door closes. “Hmm, Minato-san has left. How… fortuitous.” Sayo’s voice lilts up with playful suspicion.

“Um… Ran-chan thinks she can get about an hour out of arguing with her so…” Tsugumi let’s the implication hit Sayo.

“So?”

Maybe the implication needs a little more force. “So… what we talked about last time… would you like to…?”

Sayo breathes in sharply and Tsugumi almost bites down on her tongue. It feels so juvenile—reminiscent of all the planning they use to have to do back when their lives were so much more segmented and scheduled. The way Sayo’s life is right now.

How long has it been since Tsugumi asked Sayo if she wants to have sex?

“Yes,” Sayo whispers.

Tsugumi relaxes into her bed with the phone still clutched to her ear. There’s nothing but the even in and out of Sayo’s breathing on the other end and slowly Tsugumi realizes Sayo is waiting for her to start.

Because Tsugumi brought it up.

Which makes Tsugumi the expert.

She could cry. She should have asked Moca and Himari for advice or looked it up on the internet or done anything other than just going for it. Tsugumi’s brain gropes around for any starting point, “W-what are you wearing?”

“My clothes.” There’s a little ruffle, probably Sayo sitting up to look for herself. She continues matter of factly, “That blouse with the sunflowers you gave me and a pair of jeans. What about you?”

“Um, a sweatshirt and—just hold on a second Sayo!” Tsugumi pulls her phone away and snaps a quick selfie in her relaxing sleepwear. She poses with her hand raised like a little paw to match the cartoon dog on her shirt.

Sayo hums happily on the other side. “You’re very cute Tsugumi-san.”

“Sayo!” Tsugumi whines and presses her face into Sayo’s pillow.

“I’ll take one for you too.” There’s a pause in the sound and then a ding from Tsugumi’s phone.

She clicks open the new message and smiles. What Sayo’s selfie lacks in dynamic angles or posing or adequate lighting it makes up for in sheer Sayoness. From her rigid posture to her curt smile every pixel is Sayo through and through. Tsugumi loves her so much she could cry. She does, just a little.

Tsugumi pours over the details. Sayo’s free hand resting on her stomach. The sliver of neck exposed to the camera. The pop of her top button. The bedside lamp doesn’t provide nearly enough illumination but it’s enough for Tsugumi to fixate and imagine taking that hand in her own. Tasting Sayo’s neck. Undoing the rest of those buttons with her teeth.

And Tsugumi sent such a cutesy photo…

What had been a cozy sweatshirt moments ago is suddenly suffocating. She fingers the hem hesitantly before quickly lifting it up with one hand and snapping a picture with the other.

Tsugumi flops back down on the bed and buries her face in a pillow while blindly hitting send before this can change her mind. She brings the phone back to her ear and waits for Sayo to see it.

Duhdunk. There’s a deep thunk as Sayo’s phone bounces against her bed.

“Sayo?” Did she drop it through in pleasant surprise or moral objection?

Silence.

Then a single word forced out in a burst of air through clenched teeth. “More.”

How is it that Sayo is countries away and yet a single word from her is enough to make Tsugumi _drip_?

She clasps her hand to her mouth to keep a moan from spilling out. Carefully, she speaks. “M-More pictures?”

Sayo’s voice is hoarse. “More you.”

Tsugumi gathers her bravery and glances down at her phone and the picture she took. At her very first nude picture.

It’s bad. It’s blurry and tilted and Tsugumi’s face is completely hidden by her upturned sweatshirt. Her chest is barely in frame and what is visible has been rendered into a single peach colored blur. And it was enough to drive Sayo crazy.

Tsugumi gasps sharply—the start of a sob she doesn’t have time to deal with. She loves Sayo so much she can’t take it, at least not when Sayo is so far away and all she has is her own skin to touch.

“Tsugumi-san?” Sayo calls out into the dark.

A deep breath. Then Tsugumi pulls off her sweatshirt and holds up her phone, this time looking long enough to make sure she’s in frame before covering her eyes with her opposite hand and shooting. There’s a whoosh from the phone as the photo travels instantly across borders.

Tsugumi waits and then a wonderful strangled sound emerges from the phone, as if Sayo has to physically hold herself back from something. Maybe she does. Tsugumi can picture her, stretched out on her bed with her hand resting just above her belt buckle wanting so badly to dip her hand below but waiting. Waiting for Tsugumi.

“More,” Sayo repeats somehow more breathless than before. “Please Tsugumi.”

What more can she show? Tsugumi looks at the red and white stripes of her waistband. She could but… The idea makes the persistent blush on her face run down to her chest. That’s a bit much for one night. “I can’t…”

“Tsugumi-san?”

“It’s too much…”

Sayo whines a little like a dog told ‘no’. “Not that. I want to see your face.”

Tsugumi flips onto her side to ease the pressure between her legs just a little. She holds the phone out and tries to look… sexy is out of the question but she tries to settle for not necessarily _un_ sexy. It sort of works? Not the pictures where she tries biting her lower lip and it looks like she has a canker sore but she’s already blushing and thinking about Sayo and the expression comes… naturally.

A sigh leaves her lips as she presses send.

“Beautiful.” It’s not a compliment when Sayo says it, it’s just a fact. Tsugumi has no choice but to believe it for how much she believes in Sayo. “Tsugumi-san, I could look at you forever.”

Sayo doesn’t know the words she says could come straight from manga. Sayo never reads manga. Everything she says late at night with Tsugumi on her mind is pure unadulterated Sayo Hikawa.

There’s a rustling of material and metal on Sayo’s end.

“Sayo? What are you doing?”

“Unbuckling my trousers,” she says plainly. The sound stops. “May I?”

“Y-Yeah.” So that’s where they are now. Tsugumi’s index finger slips beneath her waist band, rubbing the soft hidden skin just above the junction of her legs. It feels filthy to be doing this on the phone but exciting to be doing it with Sayo. Tsugumi wants more too. “Send a picture?”

She waits and she receives.

It is not what Tsugumi expected, but in hindsight it is exactly what she should have. Sayo is back upright in her bed, poised and rigid as before, but with two buttons undone now. Tsugumi can’t help but giggle—whether Sayo meant it as a joke or not. Probably not. But Tsugumi wouldn’t know exactly what to do with a lascivious picture of Sayo—call Lisa to make sure Sayo doesn’t have a fever?

Still, Tsugumi’s eyes trail down the photo and land on Sayo’s open fly. A braided belt hangs undone on both sides and alongside the open denim it forms a sort of beckoning flower. Maybe a gateway. It should be silly to fixate on something so small—Tsugumi can’t even make out the color of Sayo’s underwear—but all she can think is what Sayo is about to do next. What Tsugumi will make her do without ever having to ask.

This time Sayo doesn’t ask if Tsugumi is still there. She must be able to hear the hitch in Tsugumi’s breathing, the way air scatters over the microphone as she brings the phone back to her ear.

“What next?” Sayo asks.

“Imagine I’m there with you.” It’s getting easier to speak, at least when Tsugumi has that picture of Sayo on her mind.

Sayo chuckles warmly. “I do that every night.”

“S-Sayo-san!”

“Fufu. When I have trouble sleeping I imagine you’re with me… is that a problem?”

“N-no it’s… no it’s not at all.” Tsugumi covers her red face for the benefit of no one. Sayo’s teasing her, she knows she is but the thought that maybe, just a little bit Sayo misses as much as she misses Sayo… “It’s just so much.”

“Tsugumi-san?”  
“I do the same thing.”

“So…” Sayo shuffles. Tsugumi imagines her laying down on her side, phone against her ear and hand drifting. “This should be easy for us.”

“Yes. Imagine…” She pauses. Thinks over her next words. Active or passive? “Imagine what I’d do to you.” It’d be embarrassing if anyone but Sayo was on the other end. But if anyone but Sayo was on the other end Tsugumi wouldn’t be saying it anyway.

Sayo hums softly, just a little pleased sound. “Tell me.”

Tsugumi squeezes her legs tight together as she imagines, “Your shirt. I-I’d unbutton your shirt so I can see you.”

The rustle of fabric fills her ear. She wonders if Sayo takes the time to fold her shirt when she’s alone then realizes it’s silly to wonder. Of course she does, she’s Sayo Hikawa.

She’s Sayo Hikawa somewhere across the world lying in bed half naked waiting for the next thing Tsugumi says. She bites her lower lip. Tsugumi’s hand falls to the curve of her bare stomach. She slowly moves her hand up to cover her breast, gently squeezing. A small gasp falls from her lips into the phone.

“Tsugumi-san,” Sayo sighs sweetly.

Tsugumi recognizes the inflection at once. She’s heard it so many times though never so divorced from her own actions. “Sayo-san, did you skip ahead?”

She sighs again with a little lift at the end. If Tsugumi strains her ears she can just barely hear wet, suction sound muffled by layers of clothing. “Yes, I apologize. If you’d like I can go baahck.” Sayo’s voice catches on the ‘ah’, trembling for a second.

Tsugumi swoons into the phone as if to catch the sound like a tossed bouquet and clutch it to her chest. “Keep going.”

The permission makes Sayo groan.

There’s an image of Sayo in Tsugumi’s head composed of so many fragments of memories. All the times Tsugumi’s looked over in the midst of passion to find Sayo’s off hand fumbling in her pants as she deftly takes care of her love with the other. All the elegance, the dignity, the care go to Tsugumi. Everything left falls onto herself.

Sometimes Tsugumi has enough of her mind left to push Sayo’s hand away and dive in herself but sometimes all she has the ability to do is watch that wild scramble for release. She can see it. How Sayo forces her hand inside her pants without even thinking of removing the pants first. How her long fingers curl around her opening but never inside. Inside is for Tsugumi. Sayo’s fingers work on her clit, on the tender skin outside and the wetness pooling there.

By the time Tsugumi realizes she’s stroking herself she’s already finger deep in her own folds. She inhales sharply into the phone and words fall out of her mouth almost from the sheer shock of sensation. “I’m so wet.” Tsugumi buries her face in her pillow when she hears her own words. She’s so shameless… then again they’re having sex over the phone so…

Sayo struggles to breathe on the other end. Tsugumi’s reward for her dirty words is ragged panting and more subtle liquid sounds.

Tsugumi tries to explore her body without dying of embarrassment in the privacy of her own bed. Touching herself feels mortifying even without Sayo on the line. She’s been with Sayo so long that she never had to get good at it. It always feels like an imitation of Sayo’s touch that she’ll never be able to match with her own short fingers. Sayo knows her body better than Tsugumi knows it. And with all her heart she believes the opposite is true too. Her hand stillsbetween her legs and Tsugumi focuses on Sayo’s sounds instead.

“O-oh.” Sayo so rarely makes noise and even then it’s so subtle as to be a second language. Tsugumi listens for the way Sayo’s breath swallows a groan, for the hitch around the air and the spaces between breaths when Sayo’s lungs forget the order of breathing. That’s how she knows Sayo is so close to coming. “Tsu-Tsugumi.”

Tsugumi rolls onto her side and listens to the soft whimpering sounds from her phone. She can see her girlfriend lying in her hotel room, disheveled on the bed, trying so hard to cross over that peak. “You’re doing so good.” Tsugumi shifts, holding the phone as close as she can to her ear. “You’re such a good girl Sayo.”

A dulled whine pours into her ear, so gorgeously Sayo that Tsugumi’s hand starts to stroke again slowly, rubbing herself in time with Sayo’s voice. It’s still not enough to carry Tsugumi _there_ but it’s the closest she’s felt to Sayo since she left. She knows how hard it is for Sayo to get out of her head and she can hear her trying so hard and so beautifully and all Tsugumi can do is encourage her. “Keep going baby. Let yourself go.”

But that’s all Sayo needs. She comes with a shaking inhale that peaks on the smallest gasp and then falls out from her mouth as a gentle sigh. There’s a shuffling on the other end, the gathering of a comforter. Loneliness rips through Tsugumi. She should be there around Sayo, not some blanket. She should be stroking Sayo’s hair, helping bring her heart rate back to normal, kissing her way down Sayo’s nape.

Tsugumi is struck with the horrible sensation of Lack. That’s not Sayo’s hand inside her. It’s not Sayo latched around her breast. Those are Tsugumi’s own hands and they’re a maddening substitute. It feels like all her insides have vanished, leaving only her rib cage behind to freeze and rattle with her loneliness. Sayo is so far away. Even the phone feels cold on her ear.

Tsugumi struggles to keep from sniffing back her tears and tipping off Sayo. She can’t know, not when she’s just coming down from such a nice high.

“Tsugumi?” Sayo says weakly. “Did you…?

“Yeah,” Tsugumi lies. “Just now.”

A slight release of air. “Good.” Her words seem to dissolve by the end, Sayo’s getting sleepy. Tsugumi’s arms ache to hold her.

Tsugumi’s phone buzzes against her ear—her text tone. Ran’s message burns her eyes.

> **Shit Tsugumi I fucked up she’s coming back.**

“Mitake-san is a FOOL. She knows there is no rival for Roselia other than Afterglow and YET she persists in this… THIS…” Yukina’s voice grows closer—louder and angrier than Tsugumi’s ever heard it.

There’s chaos on the other end. Sayo throws back sheets, throwing on clothes and shaking the phone around the room. All the while Tsugumi is helpless to act.

She gets one last, brief message out. “Tsugumi-san. I have to go!”

And then silence.

“Sayo?” Tsugumi calls out, knowing there won’t be an answer.

She waits, pulling her knees up to her chest. The air is so cold at night. It was summer when Sayo left and now it’s time to put the heavy blankets back on the bed. How much more will change before they’re reunited? Sixty eight days. She hasn’t even made it a month.

Hot tears crawl down her cheek, at least those are around to keep her warm.

Here she is. Alone and pathetic. So weak. Clutching her blank phone and wishing over and over that she had the nerve to say the truth out loud when there was someone to listen to it.

“I miss you.”


	3. 59 Days Left

The Izakaya is red. Not just from the dim glow of the lights hanging above the bar casting sunset colors across the walls and patrons, or from the fiery hair on their bartender’s head but from the sensation of being packed in tight quarters with the people Tsugumi loves most. The Izakaya beats red with their heartbeats, even as the many noises of the restaurant sweep over Tsugumi and drown out the actual pounding sound in her ears that grows with every sip she takes.

The clattering of glasses. The chattering of patrons. And most of all…

“Tsugu~ Tsugu~ Cheers~!”

The cheers from her friends.

Moca swings her arm around Tsugumi as she swivels back and forth on her barstool. She raises a full stein of golden beer and clinks it against Tsugumi’s barely touched glass with a wink. “Tsugu~! It’s the end of the week, you should relax!”

“Moca-chan…” Tsugumi chuckles and gently shakes Moca off. “It’s Monday.”

“And you have tomorrow off~ so it’s your weekend!”

“Moca.” Ran glares from Tsugumi’s other side. There’s no threat behind the glare, just habit. “You can’t force Tsugumi to drink.”

“It’s not like that Ran-chan! I want to drink!” To punctuate Tsugumi takes her glass and begins to chug—it is refreshing though she can only make it a third of the way down before she needs to pause and breathe.

A soft hand gently rubs her back as Tsugumi gasps for air. Ran sighs for the first time that night, though it’s certain not to be the last. “Don’t rush.”

“Rush!” Himari leans around Moca. A heavy red stripe runs between her cheeks. “You gotta catch up Tsugu!”

“Himari. How many have you had?” Ran takes a pointed sip of her green tea.

“Um…” Himari looks for the answer in the depths of her glass. “Two! No. Three?”

“Three babe.” Their bartender joins in. “Take it easy okay?”

“No way!” Her half full glass shudders as Himari slams her hands on the laminate counter. Droplets of condensation jump up every time her palms strike the wood. “I’m going aaaaaall night!”

Ran rolls her eyes. “Tomoe. You’re the bartender. You can stop her.”

Tomoe shrugs. “Ran. One day you’ll understand that when your wife wants to keep drinking, you let her keep drinking.”

She pivots around, pulling three skewers from the frier in perfect time and setting them on individual plates. In a flash of red hair and blue apron she sends those plates down the counter where they skid to an exact stop in front of the businessmen who ordered them. Tomoe goes red as cheers rise up from that end of the bar. She sheepishly ruffles the short hairs on the back of her head and turns back to her assortment of friers, stoves and meats before anyone else can try to compliment her.

Himari seems happy to take the attention for her. She claps loudly and hollers at Tomoe’s apron strings, “That’s my WIFE!”

The businessmen politely clap—Tomoe’s only worked at the restaurant for a few months but all the regulars are already accustomed to Himari’s color commentary.

Tsugumi buries her face back in her beer, letting the golden elixir pour down her throat as if it were nothing more than a hole to be filled. It _is_ refreshing and every gulp tucks a pleasant warm blanket a little tighter around her brain. No need for those meddlesome longing feelings when Sapporo is here to keep Tsugumi company in the present. She sets down the empty glass with more force than she intended.

“Tomo-chin!” Moca calls out, pushing Tsugumi’s empty drink down the counter. “Tsugu needs a refill!”

“You got it!” It’s fun to watch Tomoe work—to watch someone so big move so gracefully in the small space behind the counter juggling the food and the drinks in perfect time as a waiter brings plates and glasses out to the handful of tables in the room. It’s the happiest Tsugumi’s ever seen Tomoe at a job, even if the odd hours make it easier to see Tomoe as a customer than as her friend.

Tomoe sets a new glass in front of Tsugumi alongside a skewer of some grilled something that looks delicious.

“Tomoe-chan? I didn’t order this.”

“I’ll put it on Moca’s tab!” Tomoe glances over her shoulder with the grin that’s put them all at ease so many times. “Beer’s meant to be drunk with something salty!”

“Moca-chan doesn’t have a tab~ She pays her bills in full.”

“Uh huh, what about those special order Yamabuki fried buns?”  
Moca gasps, “Those were a favor between friends!”

“You made Tomoe go get them in the cold!” Himari charges like an angry bull into the conversation. Tsugumi leaves them to their teasing bickering.

The meat skewer looks like beef and smells like heaven. Tsugumi finishes it off in two greedy bites totally unable to stop herself from biting off as much as she can handle at once. It’s that perfect combination of salty and savory and sure enough the beer tastes that much better when she washes the meat down with it.

“Good right?” Tomoe sets another plate of skewers in front of Tsugumi.

“Yeah!” Tsugumi giggles from the beer and the atmosphere. Her friends continue to banter around her. Ran joins in, switching between Moca and Himari’s sides whenever it seems like one is losing. Tsugumi has no idea what they’re arguing about now but she’s long realized that bickering is Moca and Himari’s love language. “What is this?”

“That last one was beef tongue.”

“Beef tongue!” Tsugumi clasps her hand over her mouth as she laughs. She’s not sure what’s funny about that but it’s definitely giving her the giggles. There’s a full glass of beer in front of her again.

“And these—” Tomoe points to the little capsules of meat seared with grill marks on the plate—“are chicken hearts.”

“Chicken hearts!” Tsugumi repeats. She claps her hands together and smiles. “Tomoe-chan your tastes have really changed since we were kids!”

“Ah ha, you think?” She sweeps up the empty dishes into a pile and pauses with her hand on her hip. “Sometimes it feels like I’m still a big kid, so that’s nice to hear.”

“This place really suits you.”

Tomoe can’t hide how happy Tsugumi’s compliment makes her. “You think? Boss does too! Says I’m a natural but I think he’s just trying to butter me up ‘cause he’s tired of training newbies.” Tomoe’s warm barking laugh tickles Tsugumi’s cheeks. “But I got a couple of ideas for when I have a place of my own.”

The comforting fog over Tsugumi’s brain lifts a little as she processes the new information. “You want to own a place like this?”  
Tomoe hesitates. “I-I dunno,” She says in that way that Tomoe does when she’s too afraid to share what she it is she really wants. “I mean I was jealous of your family’s shop growing up and I always wished my family had a place like that too so…” She looks over at Himari with tender eyes as Himari clinks glasses with Moca to celebrate an unsteady truce. “Maybe my new family can have one.”

“Tomoe-chan…” Tsugumi sighs with a smile on her lips. “That’s really sweet.”

“A goal? I dunno that I really think of it like that. It’s just a thing I want to do ya know?”

“Tomoe-chan…” Tsugumi pushes gently, “That’s a goal.”

She considers the new information. “Hmm. Guess you’re right!” Tomoe blushes. “N-not that it’s happening right now! It’s just a thought I had. Plus Himari hates her job so… if I could make a place where we could work together I think that might be worth the effort… i-it’s a long ways off!” Tomoe stops with her hands on the counter and her eyes fixed on Himari. Unconsciously, she twists the gold band around her ring finger and smiles. “But it’d be nice to have a place that was ours.”

 _Ours._ Tsugumi leans back in her seat. _Tomoe and Himari’s._ They share the same dream as a couple. The foggy blanket falls from her brain and there’s Sayo, waiting to fill Tsugumi’s thoughts as she always does. They’ve talked about plans so many times but rarely dreams. Sayo slotted herself neatly into Tsugumi’s preplanned life but Tsugumi never thought to ask if she wanted to.

Maybe that’s why Sayo’s dream doesn’t include Tsugumi. Maybe that’s why it was so easy for her to go so far away.

59 days left and Tsugumi feels like she’s losing her grip on her life. There’s so much she wants to say but every time she hears Sayo’s voice she can’t help but force those feelings into a box in her heart. She hasn’t felt so lost, so insecure since she was a teenager and its—

“Tsugu! Drink up!”

Suddenly she’s the center of attention again. Moca pushes another full glass her way, Himari smiles with sloppy support and Ran rests a subtle comforting hand on her lap. Tsugumi breaths in deep and tries to exhale her worries.

“Cheers!”

* * *

Tsugumi loses count by beer three. Beer four? Many, many—too many—beers. By the time they’re putting on their coats and waving goodnight to Tomoe, Tsugumi needs Ran’s hand on her back to steady her so she doesn’t end up like Moca and Himari—kept upright entirely by how luckily perfectly they managed to fall into each other. Ran promises Tomoe something about getting Tsugumi home safe and keeping Moca and Himari out of trouble but Tsugumi’s only focused on how perfectly dyed Ran’s red streak is. She’s so much better at dyeing it now, Tsugumi thinks as she tugs on it like it’s a strap on the subway.

The night air relieves the buzzing in her head a bit. It’s a crisp fall and the air feels as clean as a metropolis can ever get. Every inhale brings clarity, every exhale lets the drunk fog rushes right back in. But it doesn’t matter too much. Tsugumi likes the fog. She likes how it makes a Monday night with her friends seem like magic again. She likes how much warmer it makes Ran’s arm around her shoulders feel. She likes how it helps her forget the thing she’s momentarily forgotten.

“Yooooooo!” Moca calls from ahead, tumbling over the sidewalk with Himari at her back. “Ranny~ Tsugu~ It’s the playground!”

Ran shifts Tsugumi’s weight around her shoulders and shuffles them forward, joining Moca at the concrete pillars denoting the entrance. “No Moca, that’s _a_ playground.”

Ran’s probably right but through the haze of alcohol and good friends it feels like _the_ _playground,_ like the place where all their individual lives turned into a singular life. There’s the sandbox where Moca set up her store and met Ran. There’s the grass where Himari and Tomoe played tag. It might not be the same but it might as well be.

They stumble towards the swings. Four swings, four of them. Not like when they were kids and they used to squabble over who had to sit out—Tomoe and Ran always fighting even though Tsugumi already volunteered. Tsugumi giggles as Ran helps her sit down on a swing seat. Himari and Moca collapse into the swings on her sides.

Himari kicks at the wood chips on the ground. “Urrrrg! I miss Tomoe!”

Ran—hovering over the group like a lifeguard—frowns. “But we just saw her?”

“Uh yeah but I want her to get off work!”

Moca nods sagely—though her chin gets stuck to her chest on the way down and she lolls for a minute half asleep before bouncing upright and shaking the chains. “Hii-chan’s waiting for Tomo-chin to get off so she can get off.”

“MOCA!” Himari snaps.

“You’re not denying it~.” Moca clumsily dodges Himari’s attempt at a kick and pulls out her phone. “Heh heh~ no judgement~. Moca-chan’s gonna call her hot girlfriend too~.”

Girlfriends… a pair of green-gold eyes pierce through Tsugumi’s brain fog. She shivers under her coat. Ah. The thing she’s forgotten…

“Moca-chan’s gettin’ fu~ucked~ oh shit I left a voicemail.”

“Ha!”

Sayo’s not waiting for Tsugumi at home. Sayo’s off in some foreign country making a bunch of strangers happy while Tsugumi…

Moca squints at Himari then sticks out her tongue and kicks off. “Whatever~ The rumors are true. Call the press, Moca Aoba is in love.”

“I’d rather call the cops.” Ran places her hands on Moca’s shoulders before Moca can start swinging too hard.

…while Tsugumi misses her so bad she wants to scream.

“Heh heh. Ran you should join us all in love land~.”

“No thanks.” Ran ruffles Moca’s hair with a smile and sits down beside her. “Not if I end up like you two. Maybe if I can be like Tsugumi.”

Tsugumi blinks back to the world. Chains creak as her friends move closer.

“Tsugu~.”

“Tsugu!”

Moca and Himari harmonize on either side of Tsugumi. They lean in close enough to catch the tears in the corner of her eyes before she can hide them away. They frown. They know exactly why she wants to cry.

Moca bounces to her feet. “I’d like to put it to a vote!” Moca holds her hands high with an unsteady wave and thrusts it down at Himari. “Chairman Udagawa?”

Himari nods solemnly. “All agreed that Sayo Hikawa is a big ‘ol dummy for leaving Tsugumi behind say ‘Aye’!”

“Aye!” Moca and Himari cheer in unison. They immediately pivot to Ran.

“What? Don’t involve me in this.”

“No~ Way~.” Moca loops her arm around Ran’s waist. “I know you’re mad too Ranny~.”

Ran sighs and rolls her eyes—but her heart’s not quite in it. “Aye.”

Moca claps. “The Ayes have it! Sayo is officially a big ‘ol dummy!”

“You guys…” Tsugumi sways on the swing. Her vision blurs.

“The council’s word is law.” Moca shrugs and falls back with hands outstretched into the swing. With gymnast-like precision she lifts herself up by the chains and into the seat proper. “Well, maybe I can get her sentence commuted to ‘little dummy’.”

Tsugumi doesn’t respond. She nudges around the wood chips on the ground with the tip of her foot and clears out a little circle of dirt.

The chains clank as Moca twists them. “Tsugu? Sorry, was that too much?” Her voice is almost gentle and suddenly Tsugumi can’t stand it.

Something inside her—weakened with beer after beer—snaps. “No. You’re right.” Tsugumi feels clarity for the first time in over a month. “Sayo is a big dummy. She left. She asked if she could leave and she left and I’m so mad I want to—”

“Scream!” Himari finishes for Tsugumi. “You should scream! You should tell her how you feel right now!”

“Yeah!” Moca agrees enthusiastically. “Call Sayo right now!”

“You think?” Tsugumi isn’t quite sure but she can’t really remember why she wouldn’t right now. Her phone finds its way to her hand.

“Is this a good idea?” Ran’s murmur is lost in the excitement.

Tsugumi blindly pounds Sayo’s contact until she finally hits the right button. The phone connects. It rings.

One ring. Two rings. And then…

The calm mechanical sound of the automatic voicemail system, “You have reached the voicemail of…”

“Sayo Hikawa.” Sayo’s voice is crisp, clear and perfect. It probably took her a dozen tries to get it exactly right. Tsugumi can picture her diligently trying again and again to just get her name recorded to her standards. Her ever high standards.

Tsugumi stuffs her phone back in her pocket before the sob she feels in her throat emerges. She grips the chain links so hard she can feel them indent her skin but she doesn’t care. Tsugumi sniffs, “Stupid.”

She kicks off from the ground, dangling her legs for just a moment before beginning to pump them back and forth. “Stupid!”

“Stupid!” Her friends echo as Tsugumi rises higher and higher with each arc of the swing.

Tsugumi isn’t sure just how high the swing can go. What was it they used to say when they were kids? If you can get the swing over the top bar you’ll get a wish?

Tsugumi pumps her legs with a ferocity she never could have managed as a kid. More likely to get a concussion than a wish. But still… if she had a concussion maybe Sayo would rush home… It’s an awful thing to think but the beer lets her be selfish.

“I hate this!” Tsugumi shouts into the sky. “Why did you ask me? Why did you make it my choice that you left?”

She’s getting higher and higher. She can almost see the top bar parallel to her eyes. “Why is it just me? Why am I the only one who hurts? I—I—” The sob chokes out the rest of her words.

Tsugumi is vaguely aware that her friends have left the swing, that they’re probably trying to figure out how to slow her down but the part of her that would listen is asleep. As she approached the peak of her swing Tsugumi swallows all the air she can hold, brings her hands to her lips and shouts with all her might, “Sayo-san you big DUMMY!”

And for a second after she flies. She can see past all the buildings in the shopping district to the sky above, as clear as those evenings they’d spend on the school roof, when everything was so close she could touch it.

Then the ground comes to meet her. Tsugumi hits the ground with a thud and a groan directly on her back. At least there’s no air left to force out of her lungs.

“I hate this.” Tsugumi’s hands fall outstretched onto the ground. Fat tears pool in her eyes but she doesn’t have the strength in her arms to wipe them away.

No. It’s because Moca and Himari are at her sides holding her hands so tight she can’t move them. Then Ran’s there, carefully lifting Tsugumi’s head up and prodding the back of her head with gentle fingers.

“Sit up for me, okay Tsugumi?” Ran helps Tsugumi up, easing herself around Tsugumi’s back in the kind of tight hug she would have been too embarrassed to give as a teenager. “Did you hit your head?”

“I don’t think so.” Her back pulses with the impact but her head is only foggy with alcohol.

Ran relaxes. “Okay, let’s get you home.”

* * *

It’s not long before Tomoe finds them in the park and scoops up Himari and Moca to drag back home to their shared apartment. Himari is easy to convince with one flex of Tomoe’s bicep but it takes a phone call from Chisato—allegedly waiting in Moca’s bed wearing something Tsugumi suspects was not intended for her ears—to get her to leave Tsugumi’s side. Ran promises them all four times over she’ll get Tsugumi home safely.

She takes the duty seriously. It’s not until Ran has wrestled Tsugumi’s keys from her hands and steered the clumsy drunkard onto the couch that she seems to relax. Just a little bit.

Ran pushes back Tsugumi’s bangs with a motherly sort of tenderness and tucks a blanket around her body. “I’ll get an ice pack.”

Tsugumi nods to Ran’s back, too slow to respond properly. She curls under the blanket and stares at the music magazines still spread over the coffee table where they haven’t moved in a month. The world is so still. So slow. Every second a minute, every minute an hour.

“Wo-woah!” There’s a shout from Ran in the kitchen and a CuhTHUD followed by a low plastic rumbling like a lazy avalanche. The stuffed refrigerator.

Before Tsugumi’s dulled reflexes can react, Ran appears in the doorway, covered in the remnants of some potato and leek soup. “We need to talk.”

Tsugumi makes room on the couch. Ran sits beside her and awkwardly pats around the blanket until she finds Tsugumi’s knee.

“So…” She pats again with her rigid hand and she looks for the right way to start things off. “Leftovers huh?”

Tsugumi burrows deeper into the blanket.

Her friend nods slowly and sighs. “It’s okay if you’re not okay, Tsugumi.” Hesitantly, Ran reaches out and pulls Tsugumi against her chest. “No one will think badly of you.”

“I will,” Tsugumi sniffs, the tears coming back. “I’ll think badly of myself.”

“Oh. Well. That’s dumb.”

The tears are surprised out of Tsugumi. “R-Ran-chan?”

“Why would you do that?”

“B-Because everyone else is fine on their own. Everyone’s an adult! And I… without Sayo-san I…”

Ran laughs, it cuts away all the tension in Tsugumi’s living room. “Tsugumi. I live with my dad and teach flower arranging to grandmas.”

“That’s not—”

“Moca barely graduated college and now she works for you. Himari hates her job. She and Tomoe would probably be codependent if their work schedules weren’t flipped upside down and most everyone we know who isn’t obsessed with roses ended up settling for the first boring office job that would take them on.”

“But that’s okay! That’s being an adult and—”

“So is managing the coffee shop you’ll own one day and missing your girlfriend so much when she goes on tour that you try to drown yourself in soup. That’s also being an adult Tsugumi. It’s kind of shitty! That’s… adulthood though.”

Tsugumi’s mouth falls open. Her jaw forgets how to close so she pushes it shut with her own fingers. “When’d you get so smart Ran-chan?”

“Somewhere in the middle of all that mess Moca put me through.” Ran smiles. “She’s really good at making me see things as they are. Making me grow up.”

Ran’s always been pretty grown up in Tsugumi’s eyes but she keeps that to herself.

Ran shifts underneath Tsugumi and leans over her. The red in her hair dangles just above Tsugumi’s face. “Tsugumi, please let us help you. Even if all we can do is eat your leftovers.”

“I’m so sorry Ran-chan.” Apologetic tears form this time.

“Just don’t let it become—what would Tomoe say—our new same as always.”

Tsugumi giggles at the rare Ran joke told exclusively for Tsugumi’s ears. “Thank you.”

“That’s what family’s for. Just promise you’ll talk to Sayo. She loves you, you have to talk to her.”

She nods. “I will, not now but…” Tsugumi yawns. “In the morning…”

“Hold on.” Ran carefully shakes Tsugumi awake. “Tsugumi, you can’t sleep yet. You need at least three glasses of water first. Tsugumi!”

* * *

Skrrt Skrrt Skrrt.

It’s a quiet evening in Hazawa Coffee. There are only two figures moving about inside, a barista stacking clean glasses and her friend sweeping the floors.

_Her friend._

Ah, Tsugumi remembers. She’s sixteen again with her hair cropped shorter and nothing more than band practice to worry about. Well, and the older girl with sad eyes who stops by every day for a cup of black coffee and a few minutes of Tsugumi’s time. Tsugumi wants to give her more. She thinks she’d happily give the older girl every minute she has. And she’s starting to think Sayo might feel the same way.

They’re not dating but every time their eyes meet Tsugumi’s heart glows with the hope that they just might start soon. She hardly knows anything about Sayo, doesn’t even know if she likes girls in the same way Tsugumi does but those worries don’t really matter when Sayo sits at her usual table and Tsugumi watches her take that first sip.

It’s only recently that Tsugumi stopped telling Sayo it’s closing time when she flips the open sign over. The first time Sayo is deeply embarrassed at keeping Tsugumi late. The second time she picks up a broom.

Skrrt Skrrt Skrrt.

The floors are hardly dirty but Sayo doesn’t miss an inch anyway.

Tsugumi jolts up, remembering that she is the employee and Sayo is her precious customer trying too hard to help out. She hurries out from behind the counter, pressing against the side of a table as she calls out to Sayo. “Sayo-san, you’re too kind. You don’t have to do that.”

Sayo shakes her head with that kindly smile. The sunset strikes her hair through the window and she becomes the ocean in the shop, unknowably deep but oh so welcoming. “Hazawa-san, I don’t mind at all.”

She relaxes, although Tsugumi knows it’s her place to refuse Sayo’s help again. “You should work here part-time. At least let my parents pay you for your help.”

Again Sayo shakes her head in time to the brush of the broom. “I’m afraid I lack the discerning palate one must need for such work. More and more I find myself unable to enjoy coffee from anywhere else.”

The splinters dig under Tsugumi’s nails as she clings to the bottom of the table to keep her face from blushing too hard. “You… You don’t need good taste. Not that you don’t have it! But…” The intimacy of the moment makes Tsugumi want to confess something but she’s a girl with few secrets. Save for the one she’ll share soon enough. “The truth is… I can’t handle black coffee.”

Sayo’s eyebrows rise from furrowed concern to laughing arches. A tiny giggle, mostly muffled by her hand, emerges from her throat and settles into a perfect smile. “Hazawa-san, I never would have guessed.”

“I’m really good at hiding it.” Something in Sayo’s smile makes Tsugumi feel bashful. She wants to hide her face away but she doesn’t want Sayo to leave her sight. “You can’t tell anyone! Nobody will trust a barista who can’t take her coffee black.”

“On my honor,” Sayo says so solemnly that Tsugumi doesn’t know if she’s being teased or sharing a moment with Sayo. “It’s between us.”

Tsugumi steps around the table keeping them apart and pauses only footsteps away from Sayo. Her hands twist around her apron as her eyes try to dare Sayo to say more and lower lip sneaks between her teeth. She couldn’t ask for a more perfect moment—everything that matters happens at sunset.

Sayo breathes in deeply. She seems to steel herself before, leaning on the broom as a cane, she speaks,“Do you know why I stay behind to sweep the shop?”

“No.” Tsugumi can’t imagine why Sayo would stay so long after closing except out of her own kind heart.

“Because I want to be with you a little longer, Tsugumi-san.”

Tsugumi’s heart swells both with the idea that Sayo could want to be around her so much and also— “You—you said my name.” —with the sound of those three syllables Sayo has never before uttered.

CaCaaClaatter. The broom falls to the floor like bouncing thunder. Sayo stumbles back, face blooming with embarrassment. “Hazawa-san! I did not mean to… that is I…”

Words fail Sayo, so Tsugumi takes over. She steps forward with all her bravery and pulls Sayo’s hands into her own. Both their hands are worn from hard work and practice but feel so perfect pressed together. “Please Sayo-san. Say it again.”

Her face is cast down, Tsugumi wants to see her lips form the name but…“Tsugumi-san.”

The world melts away into a blur of color before Sayo ever looks up.

It was too wonderful to be anything but a dream, Tsugumi thinks as her consciousness stirs behind her eyelids and she finds a new day has begun without her quite remembering how to last one left off. The brutal soreness in her back hints at the events.

A quiet murmur and a squeeze around her outstretched hand gives Tsugumi some clue. She blinks her morning-blurry eyes until Ran’s sleeping face comes into focus—red streak plastered across her forehead, clothed in a borrowed t-shirt, and drooling just enough to embarrass her when she wakes. She stayed for Tsugumi’s sake. Tsugumi smiles into her pillow and squeezes Ran’s hand back.

Ran wakes up as soon as Tsugumi pulls her hand away. She sits up, squeezing her forehead as if she were the one who drank her weight in beer the night before. “How do you feel?”

“Okay!” Memories of Ran pushing glass after glass of water into her hands come surging back to Tsugumi. “Thank you.”

Ran nods sharply and stretches. “I still smell like soup. I need a shower.”

“Go ahead!” Tsugumi points to the bedroom’s attached bathroom, though Ran’s already more than familiar with the apartment’s layout. “You can borrow some clothes too.”

She shoots Tsugumi a little ‘ok’ gesture and rolls off of the bed, shedding her clothes as she does with the casual confidence of someone still too sleepy to be embarrassed. Besides, after eighteen years of friendship there’s very little left to hide.

Tsugumi lifts herself up and leans against the headboard, reaching for the phone that someone—definitely Ran—was thoughtful enough to plug in overnight.

Odd. There’s a family diner menu worth of notifications waiting for her. It’s like everyone she’s ever known decided last night was the perfect time to check in on her. She flicks down the list, pausing at the very bottom.

**Sayo Hikawa. 2 missed calls.**

Sayo called? But they didn’t have a call scheduled for last night. Tsugumi scrolls up the other notifications looking for clues before she goes to the source of the confusion. A pattern quickly appears.

**> Is Hikawa-senpai alright? **

** >Dear Tsugumi-chan, has trouble befallen sweet Sayo? May I offer some succor in these times… **

** >Have you heard from Sayo-senpai?**

Everyone is worried about Sayo. Luckily, maybe,Tsugumi only has to scroll down to find the reason, sent by Himari.

**> What’s up with Sayo?**

There’s a video attached. Tsugumi is too worried to be nervous as she clicks the play button.

It’s a Roselia concert. Maybe the one from last night? There’s Yukina. There’s Lisa. And there’s… Sayo, looking like someone hollowed her from the inside out. That’s not the subtle seriousness of Roselia’s guitarist in her eyes. That’s the melancholic depression of Tsugumi’s girlfriend laid out for the world to see. She plays the notes with technical perfection but it’s clear her heart just isn’t in it. Sayo usually looks so much larger than life when she stands on stage but here she just looks lost.

The video picks up the murmuring wonder of the crowd. The consensus is clear: Something is wrong with Sayo Hikawa.

A hundred catastrophic scenarios race through Tsugumi’s head at once: Something with Hina? A bad practice? A dog snubbed her? There are so many possibilities and none of them make any sense. For better or worse Sayo can compartmentalize better than anyone Tsugumi knows. She doesn’t let her personal feelings hurt her playing.

Tsugumi tries calling Sayo.

“You have reached the voicemail of—”

Tsugumi hangs up. Just like last night. She gasps, clutching at her bedsheets. There’s no way. Yes she’d called last night but it went to voicemail so she hung up! … She… hung up… right?

She races to her sent calls log, trying to contain her growing panic. There’s no way—there’s no way—!

**Sayo Hikawa. Monday. Outgoing call 3 minutes.**

Tsugumi whispers the largest understatement she’s ever made. “Oh no.”

Sayo heard her. Sayo heard her complaining, her selfish whining. Sayo heard all those horrible things Tsugumi had meant for only her friends’ ears…

The video. That Sayo on stage, the one looking so lost up there… She must have listened just before the show and—

Tsugumi’s stomach roils with all the nausea she should have felt the night before.

She tries to call again.

“You have reached the voicemail of—”

Again.

“You have reached—”

Again.

“You—”

Ding.

The text tone shocks Tsugumi out of her repetition. Her hands shake as she opens the message. Two words from Yukina Minato.

**> Fix her**


	4. 59 Days Redux

The show is not the car crash. The car crashed in the wings five minutes before curtain directly into Sayo’s ear. The show is not the car crash. It’s the aftermath of one. Something in Sayo’s brain simply stops when she hears Tsugumi’s sobs a world away and it doesn’t restart as she steps onto stage and looks into the vast emptiness of space before Roselia dotted with glow stick stars. It doesn’t restart when her fingers begin, unbidden, to play the set list she’s performed perfectly for a month straight. It doesn’t restart when the show ends after an uncomfortable encore Roselia knows they didn’t earn.

_I hate this_.

She’s numb as she steps off stage. It’s a full body numbness that makes her struggle to keep her precious guitar upright until it finally slips from her fingers and dangles from its strap as wasteful as a tourist’s camera. A stagehand pulls it off. She doesn’t have the wherewithal to protest someone manhandling her guitar—she needs distance between herself and… everything. But there’s hardly the space for that in the backstage corridor.

“Sayo.” Yukina calls out but Sayo cannot bear to turn around and face the fact that she disappointed two partners that night. Sayo doesn’t answer. With quick, sharp footsteps Yukina brushes past her guitarist with a curt order muttered in her ear. “Fix it before tomorrow.”

Sayo wishes Yukina was the yelling type. It would hurt so much less.

She pounds her fist on the black brick wall. What good is Sayo? She hits the wall again. The irregular stone takes the punishment without complaint—Sayo’s hand is less lucky. Sayo shakes it out and sighs, it’s no use getting worked up like that. Sayo Hikawa does not throw tantrums. She fixes things. She needs a plan. Anything can be managed with a plan.

It snaps together quickly. Sayo sees it in her addled mind’s eye. It’s flawless. All she has to do is enact it. She pivots from the wall with misguided determination and heads for the exit, still dressed in her stage costume.

“Sayo! Where are you going?” Lisa cuts off Sayo’s path, slipping between the guitarist and the door.

Sayo blinks slowly, forgetting for a moment that not everyone knows what’s happening in her head. “Tokyo.” It seems so obvious as to be a waste to state.

“What?” Lisa is more surprised than upset. They all are, Ako and Rinko catch up quickly—Yukina is long gone. Ako joins Lisa in barricading the door, resting her long arms across the frame above Lisa’s head with a worried look to Sayo. Sayo cringes inside. It’s embarrassing to have Ako worried about her.

But there’s no reason to be worried, Sayo thinks as she looks between her three bandmates. Sayo feels quite light really. She has a plan. “Imai-san, can one still purchase a ticket at the airport? I’ve never attempted that before. Perhaps I should order one online? Nevertheless I—“

“Sayo! You can’t run off to Tokyo after one bad show!” Lisa’s face softens. She reaches for Sayo’s hand. “Everyone has an off night.”

“Off night?” Sayo’s head tilts. Of course. Sayo snaps her fingers just out of Lisa’s reach. “You misunderstand.” She smiles, it’s so simple. She just has to explain to Lisa. “Tsugumi-san hates me, so I must return home and prostrate myself right away.”

The softness and concern in her friends’ faces turns into raw confusion. Lisa laughs nervously. “What are you talking about?”

“A false assumption… usually leads… to a false conclusion…” Rinko adds tugging at Sayo’s elbow. Sayo doesn’t have time to work out the meaning.

“No she does.” Sayo’s tone is as breezy as if she were talking about the weather—though Sayo is never breezy when talking about the weather. Sayo has never spoken breezily about anything. “She informed me of such over the phone. Do not be concerned. I will catch a flight now, apologize in the morning and get on a flight back before our next concert. Everything will be fine.”

It begins to occur to Sayo that everything may not be fine but trying to grapple with such considerations is starting to hurt her head and heart in tandem, so instead, she reaches around Lisa for the push bar.

Lisa glances at the other two and scrambles. “You can’t do that because… because…”

Ako leaps in. “Tsugu-chin will be asleep when you arrive and if you wake her up she’ll way angrier at you!”

…The frantic panicking neurons flashing in Sayo’s brain are forced to admit Ako has a point and if that one point is true… Sayo’s hand falls away from the door and pull back to her chest. She clings to her shirt as if that would let her keep a hold on the plan falling apart in front of her. Harsh light spills through the holes in her logic. For a brief moment she’d thought she’d had things under control. But that was just a bit of self-delusion.

Sayo’s eyes fall away from her friends. They grow distant as she stares into the floorboards. Everyone grows distant. Tsugumi feels so much further away than she’s ever been. “What do I do?”

A warm arm surrounds her with a soft squeeze. Rinko rests her head on Sayo’s shoulder before patting firmly and deciding for the group. “Let’s go… get a drink…”

* * *

Yukina is asleep by the time Sayo returns to their shared hotel room. It’s not unusual. She rarely stays around after a show opting to tuck herself into bed as quickly as possible—very often leaving their venues by herself. Normally, Sayo joins her. A well rested musician is a prepared one. There are no afterparties for a band such as Roselia. Not for Lisa and Ako’s lack of trying.

Sayo lingers at the door after changing into something more comfortable—and more acceptable in public than an avant-garde suit—and watches the rise and fall of Yukina’s chest, so slight that more than once Sayo has been tempted to check her pulse. If this were six years ago Yukina would have kicked her out of the back. If this were six years ago, Sayo would have left out of shame. Sometimes Sayo wonders if she would be a better musician without her relationship. She’d at least be more focused but…

She doesn’t want to be the person who would leave after failing again.

With a last nod to Yukina’s near-comatose sleeping form, Sayo leaves for the hotel bar to meet with the others. It’s the only place around that’s open just before midnight. Plus, Sayo needs a drink.

It’s just a little place tucked into the corner of the hotel. A month of constant travel and six separate hotels have convinced Sayo there’s only one hotel bar in all the world. The hotels may all differ in presentation but every sign reading “Bar” actually leads to the same eleven seat bar—a special sort of purgatory where business suits mix with Hawaiian shirts.

Back again, Sayo thinks as she steps through the entrance. There’s the bartender behind the counter who could somehow pass for every age between 25 and 50. The wood paneling around the bar trying to make it look classy. The mirror on the wall so you can watch yourself get more tired and more drunk as the night goes on. A table of business men getting too drunk on the company tab. And there is, as always, a moderately attractive woman perched on the end of the bar looking for someone interesting to spend the night with.

Though perhaps that last one is simply a side effect of traveling with Lisa Imai.

“Imai-san. Here I am.”

Lisa looks Sayo up and down—taking in her after show special, jeans and a t-shirt, with a sigh. “This took you fifteen minutes?”

“I had to change.”

She rolls her eyes and pats the seat beside her. “For fifteen minutes, in which Miss Right could have just walked right by.”

“My ‘Miss Right’ is in our apartment in Tokyo.”

“Not _yours_ MINE.” Lisa motions around the room with her vodka cranberry—Sayo recognizes the blood red liquid in the glass.

Sayo glances around the room. A trio of businessmen in the corner perk up. Sayo hopes they don’t speak Japanese. “Is that why you kicked Yukina out of your room?”

“Yes! I need privacy to get laid!”

“…Have you?”

“No.” Lisa throws back half her drink and grumbles something about out of touch married women.

No one knows why Lisa insists on this charade. Anyone who’s ever known Lisa knows very well that all Lisa wants is a wife she can make dinner every night and breakfast in the morning. And yet she comes to bars in low cut dresses, insisting that she just want a hook up and then cries when her flings end predictably. But this is not the night Sayo wants to unpack Lisa’s baggage.

The bartender mercifully interrupts. “What’ll you have?”

It’s the obvious question to ask in a bar but Sayo can’t help but feel a twinge of annoyance. Adults should have alcohol of choice and yet Sayo’s indulgences are rarely more than a beer when she’s particularly stressed or a bottle of wine shared with Tsugumi when they’re celebrating.

“Red wine,” Sayo says before pulling another term from the recesses of her mind. “A Cabernet Sauvignon.” For the life of her she doesn’t know what it means but Sayo hates to be indecisive.

It’s enough for the bartender. He nods and pulls a bottle from below the counter, holding it up for Sayo’s approval—she hums approvingly as if she could tell—before pouring her a glass.

Sayo sips her wine. It’s good, pours warmth down her throat when she feels so cold. Sayo has absolutely no idea if it counts as ‘good wine’ but she enjoys it enough to continue sipping. Lisa watches but before she can comment the other two night owls of the band join them.

Like Sayo, Rinko and Ako have elected to get comfortable after their concert. They settle in beside Sayo in oversized sweatshirts and comfortable pants. They look like they crashed Lisa’s date.

Ako leans over the bar with an easy grin and tries to catch the bartender’s attention. “Sorry we’re late, ran into some groupies, had to give them a raincheck.” Ako winks, the implication is clear. Sayo has found Rinko reading in the hotel lobby late on more than one night.

“Udagawa-san, shouldn’t you be more careful?” Sayo says on the edge of scolding.

Ako shrugs, “We’re indie rock stars. Lesbianism is just good marketing. ‘Sides I can’t help it if ladies love to munch on the Tako.”

“Don’t call yourself that.” Lisa reaches around Sayo and flicks Ako behind the ear like a naughty child. It’s their own fault for unleashing Ako on the world fresh out of college and almost six feet tall.

Ako bangs on the bar. The bartender jumps to attention. She was always confident but the extra height—now she even towers over even her older sister—comes with twice the confidence. “Yo, she’ll have a martini,” Ako calls out, casually looping her arm around Rinko’s neck and totally missing how badly it makes her best friend blush. Sayo sends silent sympathies. “And I’ll have a Dark ‘N Stormy. Do you have any dry ice?”

He blinks slowly. “I’ll check in the back.” It’s a polite no but Ako takes him at his word and grins.

“We talking about Sayo yet?” Ako nudges Sayo between the ribs. It hurts.

“Ako! I was working up to it,” Lisa grumbles, flicking the straw in her drink.

Ako shrugs and grins, “Work up to it faster! Right Rin-Rin?”

“We are worried Sayo-san…” Time has made Rinko more confident with her forms of address but no more quick with her words. “What did… Hazawa-san say?”

Sayo looks between her bandmates—no—between her friends and perfunctorily pulls out her phone. “Please listen.”

The second play through is more painful than the first. Surprise rendered Sayo numb, now every hitch in Tsugumi’s voice twists the knife in Sayo’s heart. The love of her life is hurting and it’s her fault.

Her friends stare pityingly at her as the message finishes. Sayo empties her glass. The bartender moves in to fill it at once. She doesn’t stop him.

“That was…” Lisa searches for a diplomatic description.

“Fucking rough man.” Ako slaps Sayo’s back. In Ako’s mind it’s comforting. She’s more like Tomoe with every passing year. “Tsugu-chin’s having a tough time.”

That doesn’t particularly need stating. Sayo’s shoulders slump. She takes comfort in her drink.

“Ah ha,” Lisa jumps in trying to beat down the foul cloud gathering over Sayo. “It sounds like Tsugumi’s been drinking, she probably doesn’t mean what she says.”

Ako shrugs. “Yeah but it’s… uh uh—

“ _I_ _n vino verita_ _s,”_ Rinko whispers loudly in her ear.

“That’s it!”

“Ako!” Lisa scolds. “That doesn’t mean…”

“It’s over… isn’t it?” Sayo stares into her eyes reflected in red in the glass. Some part of her knows she’s letting herself get carried away but there’s comfort in accepting the worst possible scenario, even when that worst possible is something she can’t possibly bear.

Rinko is, surprisingly, the first person to break the silence that followed. “…Probably.”

Sayo chokes on her wine. “Shirogane-san?”

“R-Rinko didn’t mean it like that!” Lisa chuckles. “Right?”

Liquid swirls around the curve of Rinko’s martini glass, threatening to spill but not quite making it over the rim. “If you think… ‘this is the end’… then it is the end… isn’t it?”

“Ah.” Sayo can see the logic in Rinko’s words. If she gives up on her relationship at the slightest roadblock then it really is over. But that hurts. The idea of truly ending things with Tsugumi… that’s not something Sayo will consider. She didn’t really believe that at all did she? “I won’t let that happen.”

Rinko smiles. “…Good.” She sips her martini with the air of someone who belongs somewhere better than the cheap wood paneling and off-brand paintings of this hotel bar.

“I have to fix it.” Sayo leans back on her stool. “If I have wronged her I want to apologize but… I am not sure what I have done. Nothing has ever come up before. We talk about everything and she’s never mentioned anything… anything that would hurt her like this.”

Ako reaches over the counter and spins Sayo’s phone. “Did you really ask her if you could go on tour?”

Sayo frowns. “Of course I did. I was not about to decide without her.”

“Did you really give her a choice though?”

“How do you mean?”

“Like…” Ako sips her red and black drink, shivering as she swallows. “When you get a quest in NFO, you kind of have to accept right? It’s framed so you’re a big jerk if you refuse and sometimes there’s not even an option it just gets added to your log. Did you ask like that?”

Sayo’s mind wanders to a sun drenched kitchen, Tsugumi at the stove as Sayo wraps her arms around her and asks her permission to leave. Her fingers twitch around her glass. Was she really asking that day? Or was she just looking to assuage the guilt she already felt? “I don’t know.”

Lisa downs the rest of her drink and motions for a second or, knowing Lisa, a third. “Do you miss Tsugumi?”

The question makes Sayo recoil in offense. Another lifetime ago she would have snapped off Lisa’s head for the implication but that Sayo never would have been close enough to anyone to be so personally insulted. She settles on a simple, controlled, “Yes.”

“Does she know that?”

Sayo drinks her wine to buy her time to answer. Tsugumi must know how much Sayo misses her: how painful it is to be apart from the woman she loves, from her partner, from their life together. Sayo feels it screaming through her soul every time they talk, surely it’s loud enough for Tsugumi to hear.

Lisa speaks again before Sayo can reply. “Let me rephrase. Have you TOLD her you miss her?”

“No.”

Her friends all sigh. “Sayochi…” Ako slopes forward, forehead tapping against Sayo’s. “You can’t do that.”

Again Sayo’s instinct to defend herself flares up. What do her friends know of relationships? Ako can’t keep one woman in her bed for two nights, Rinko’s been pining for Ako since the growth spurt, and Lisa’s longest relationship was with Yukina—they all still bear the scars of that break up.

But they’re trying to help. She breathes in and sips the warm wine to calm her anger. Her friends want to help. “I don’t want to hurt her. If I tell her she’ll worry.”

Lisa throws up her hands. “You two are too similar!” She starts to drink, liquid quickly disappearing from her glass.

“I-Imai-san?”

“Sayo-san…” Rinko whispers. “If you’re not telling Hazawa-san how you feel, couldn’t… she do the same?”

The gears in Sayo’s head screech to a halt. “I see.” Sayo stands. “Excuse me, I need to get to the airport right away.”

Lisa yanks Sayo back down with remarkable strength. “No! No! No! Running away isn’t the solution! You need to talk to her.”

“The airport—”

“On the phone!” Lisa’s forehead falls onto Sayo’s shoulder. “You need to call her.”

“…Now?”

Lisa reaches into Sayo’s pants pocket and thrusts her phone onto the counter. “Yes! Call her right now!”

“It’s late…” Sayo hesitates.

“Bzzt. Wrong answer.” Lisa scoops up Sayo’s phone. “I’ll do it.”

“How do you know my password?”

“You’re predictable. Don’t use your girlfriend’s birthday!

“That’s a very… insecure password…” Rinko adds.

“Shhhh,” Lisa hushes them all with the phone pressed to her ear. “It’s ringing.”

Sayo holds her breath. She could stop Lisa but in truth she doesn’t think she’s brave enough to make the call on her own.

“Ring ring, ring ring~” Lisa sings along with the phone. “Ring~ Ah!”

“Is that Tsugumi—”

“Voicemail.” Lisa hangs up.

Sayo’s sigh is filled with relief and disappointment.

“Let me try again!”

“Imai-san, that’s enough.” Sayo retrieves her phone and hangs up the new call. “She’s probably asleep.” There is comfort in that thought. If Tsugumi is asleep then she can’t come to hate Sayo any more that night. How quickly the space between them brings back Sayo’s insecurities. A month ago she would have sworn she knew everything about Tsugumi and now…

“Sayo.” Lisa’s head hits the counter with pout. “Why are you here?”

Sayo frowns. “Because you asked me to be?”

“No! Not like—” she gestures around— “HERE here. Like the tour. Why are you on tour when you have someone like Tsugumi waiting for you at home?”

Sayo’s frown deepens as her eyebrows furrow. “We’ve always discussed going on tour when Udagawa-san completed her education.”

“If I had a cute wife I’d never leave her!”

“Yes you would,” Ako laughs, so much like Tomoe Sayo almost thinks she’s home. “As soon as Yukina-san asked you to!”

Rinko leaves her seat to rub Lisa’s back as their bassist groans on the counter. “Maybe Hazawa-san thinks… you picked… Roselia.”

“But, I am Roselia. It’s not something I—” Sayo stops. She’d never once thought of it as a choice: Tsugumi OR Roselia. “Roselia is the five of us. Where Roselia goes, I go.”

There’s something fierce in Rinko’s eyes. “What about her… does Hazawa-san have to put her life on hold… every time we tour…?”

“I… can’t decide that.”

“No, not on your own.” Rinko’s hand covers Sayo’s. Her hands are small, a little chilly from her glass but comforting. But it’s not the hand Sayo wishes she could hold.

“What do I do?”

“For now…”

Ako and Lisa cover Rinko’s hand on Sayo’s.

“We wait.”

* * *

It’s been so many years since Sayo last woke up in Tsugumi’s old bedroom wedged between the wall and her girlfriend with a keyboard shaped pillow under her head. She used to sneak in when she’d visit from college on the weekends. Sayo would arrive at the back door and Tsugumi would hustle her upstairs and they’d spend long hours just looking and stroking and feeling so so lucky until they fell asleep tangled together—still a novelty for them at the time.

In a few minutes Tsugumi’s father will call them for breakfast and Sayo will fix her hair and her clothes and act as though she’s just arrived even though everyone at the table knows very well where she slept last night. Tsugumi’s parents aren’t stupid but they love their daughter and they love the girl she fell for almost as much.

Tsugumi stirs in her old bed. She’s spooned against Sayo—the only way to sleep comfortably in a twin bed—and every muscle twitch in her body reverberates into Sayo. There’s no sneaking out of a bed like this. But Sayo wouldn’t. She hates leaving Tsugumi to wake up alone. It’s so cold, so cruel. But it’s easier than saying goodbye isn’t it? If only they never had to say goodbye…

The room stretches and then squashes down, shrinking into a square. Hardwood floors give way to four and a half tatami mats—barely wide enough to stretch Sayo’s arms across. Her old Kyoto boarding house room from college. The desk where she’d study every night til her eyes crossed and her pen tumbled from her hands rushes into the corner. Her guitar is laid carefully in the closet out of the way. And the futon is spread across the floor where it stayed every weekend Tsugumi visited and later every day when she rented the room next door. Tsugumi rarely stayed in that room. Eventually, Sayo moved her desk over.

They made so much joy on that floor, making love without the borders of a bed frame. Sometimes they’d roll onto the tatami and keep going on the old straw. Sayo is sure the next tenant found their fingerprints pressed into the mats.

Tsugumi rolls over on the futon. Her hair is wild as if they just finished rolling around. It brings back to many memories. Sayo reaches over to smooth her hair down and the room changes again. Everything grows around them. The walls, _the bed._ It grows double in size and raises up onto a sturdy black wooden frame before sliding against the wall with a crack. The sheets and décor become more modern and sleek and Sayo knows the room at once. It’s their bedroom. If Sayo strains her neck she can even see the little dark dent between the top of the headboard and the wall.

Everything in the room they picked out together. The night stands. The lamps. The bed. Sayo remembers how long it took them to pick out a mattress. Tsugumi was ready to settle but Sayo did her research and studied all her notes to figure out exactly what made her girlfriend the most comfortable. They tried out mattress after mattress until finally they found one that suited them perfectly. The kind of mattress they plan to use for a long time.

Tsugumi is so beautiful asleep in their bed. Their bed. Their home. Theirs.

Sayo reaches for Tsugumi’s cheek. Even when they have a queen bed to spread out on they still find themselves drawn to the center together. Always within reach. Every morning spent waking up with Tsugumi under her fingertips.

But just before she can touch those soft, pliable cheeks, the room begins to shrink again. The walls close in, geometric wallpaper rushing up the side. Her bed shrinks underneath her as an auburn striped carpet grows like dead grass from the floor. The lamps retreat into the wall. A mass produced landscape painting emerges. A television grows from the wardrobe and in the corner of Sayo’s eye she sees a second bed emerge before the giant floor to ceiling curtains that now hang in front of a new window.

No, no, no. That’s not fair. It’s not fair that her dreams take her to the same place she’ll wake up. Not when she has Tsugumi by her sid—

Tsugumi?

Sayo’s bed is empty.

Sayo spreads her hands along the sheets as if Tsugumi was a phone she misplaced. Then she throws back the comforter, jumps from the bed and rips it all apart until she has a bare mattress under hands. Still, no Tsugumi.

So Sayo claws. With her bare hands she rips into the mattress. Foam and cotton and springs all shred alike under her nails. She digs and digs and digs. The mattress descends down and down, so far down the light disappears and all Sayo has is digging and hope. Hope that somewhere Tsugumi still waits for her.

It takes a few minutes for Sayo to realize she’s woken up and that’s the ceiling she’s staring at and not the abyss. The incessant ring of her phone clues her in. She really needs to change her ringtone—the default pierces through her skull and jabs with little prongs at her brain. Though perhaps that’s what makes it a good ringtone.

Sayo doesn’t need to look at her phone to know who is calling—though of course she does. There’s Tsugumi’s face smiling up at her. Moca set the contact photo for her, Sayo didn’t even know you could change contact photos. Normally the little picture, taken on an impulse as Sayo walked into Hazawa Coffee some years ago, makes Sayo’s heart warm. Today it hurts. Today she wonders if she’ll ever see that face smile like that again. If she even deserves to.

The ringing stops. Sayo’s shoulders sink. For all her talk the night before, she’s a coward in the end. She can’t pick up the phone and—

It starts again. The phone buzzes along the bedside table, humming against the wood. Sayo watches silently until it finally stops.

Then it rings a third time.

“Sayo. Pick up your phone.”

She forgot Yukina. There’s an odd sort of panic in Sayo’s eyes when she turns to Yukina. A sort of “when did you get there” that forgets that Yukina has been her roommate for a month. Her band leader sits perched on the edge of her bed—parallel to Sayo—already dressed for the day. When she changes, Sayo has no idea, no matter how early she rises Yukina is already awake and ready.

The phone continues to ring.

“Sayo!”

“I can’t.” Sayo swallows hard. “I cannot pick it up.”

Yukina looks at her with the sort of inquisitive concern that lends to her best song writing though Sayo prays she won’t be getting another symphony out of this. “Why?”

For better or worse, Sayo considers Yukina her best friend. That doesn’t make the words come out any easier. “Tsugumi is hurt.”

“Then apologize.”

“I don’t…” Sayo bundles her fists in her lap. “I don’t think it’s the sort of thing I can apologize away.”

The phone stops ringing. The silence that follows hurts more than the sound.

“Why won’t you talk to her?” Yukina doesn’t move to turn on a light. She and Sayo sit in the dim light of early morning puncturing the thin hotel curtains.

“I don’t know what to say.” Sayo’s hand shakes. She covers it with her other hand but then she simply has two trembling hands and no more clue what the magic words she needs to say to keep her life from falling apart are.

“You start with hello.”

Sayo stares at Yukina. Yukina stares back. If only she could spend an afternoon in Yukina’s mind, she would either learn the wisdom of the ancients or go mad from what lurks in there. “I have spoken on the phone before.”

“You are acting as though you haven’t.” If Sayo’s ears aren’t deceiving her there’s a little huff in Yukina’s voice. She pulls her phone from the side of the bed where it lies disconnected from its charger—as it likely has all night—and abandons Sayo for her text messages.

Sayo can hardly believe that’s the end of the conversion. “Minato-san?”

Yukina looks up. “When she calls again. You’re going to answer. I won’t pretend to understand what you’re thinking but. If you don’t fix this I’ll be calling in Hina. She’s been following the tour. We enjoyed tea in Taipei.”

That threat would have destroyed her years ago, now she almost laughs. Sayo sighs deeply and tries to grapple with Yukina’s request. “But what do I _say_? She’s hurting Minato-san and I can’t fix it.”

“First you say hello and then you say the rest.” Yukina stands up. “Figure it out.”

“I-I will. I promise Minato-san.”

“Good. I like Tsugumi. She makes you happy.”

Once more, Sayo’s phone buzzes. Tsugumi’s face bursts onto her screen. Her hand hesitates over the screen before… “Minato-san, may I have some privacy?”

But Yukina is already gone.

Sayo breathes deep and answers.


	5. All the Days that Remain

Eternity is the exact length between the moment the phone stops ringing and words:

“Hello, Tsugumi-san.”

Tsugumi permits herself a small, relieved sigh as she peels her fingers from the edge of her couch where she had gripped so tightly she could feel her fingers against her palm through the dense cushion. If she listens close she can hear the shower run, but she can hardly think about Ran now. Not when Sayo’s on the line.

“Hello.”

Several years pass with every second of silence. Tsugumi breathes deep.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

Either Tsugumi is hearing things or there’s an echo in the phone. A glitch, or perhaps…

A double apology. Before Tsugumi can clarify, Sayo rushes to take blame. “Tsugumi-san, you have nothing to apologize for. Everything is my fault—”

“Sayo-san, no.” Tsugumi can see her so clearly, stiff on her hotel bed, perhaps already bowing down with her head pressed with bruising force to the foot of the bed. If only she could pull Sayo up by her face and make her see how Tsugumi feels. But all they have are words.

“—I should never have left, never should have taken for granted that you would never say no and most of all I—”

“Sayo stop!”

“—I don’t know what to say.” The words shake. Sayo’s voice trembles. Tsugumi can hear the tears forming in the corner of her eyes, the tears Sayo always tries to shed out of sight. “Tsugumi, please. Tell me how to fix this.”

“Nothing is broken. I promise.” Despite everything, despite the panic that has been growing in her heart since she woke up, Tsugumi believes that with her whole heart. Her eyes drift shut as Sayo fills her mind. “I’m sorry I called you last night. I didn’t mean to leave you that message.”

“Still…” Sayo’s voice cracks like a chip in the paint. “I drove you to such lengths.”

“Sayo…” Tsugumi’s heart swells. There’s a lot she could say. A lot she probably will say. But Tsugumi lets her heart tell her brain that she’ll handle it. “I miss you.”

There’s a creak on the other end—Sayo sits up. Her breath is heavy at Tsugumi’s ear. “I miss you too. I miss you so much Tsugumi.” Just when Sayo feels close enough to touch, she pulls back. “I’ve been a terrible partner.”

“No. No you haven’t!”

“I left you.”

“I told you to go.”

“I should never have asked.”

Tsugumi’s own words from the night before ring in her mind. “No. But you did.”

“I did.”

The words fall like stones into a puddle. They ripple through Tsugumi from her heart to the tips of her fingers before sinking to her stomach in one foul pile so heavy she has to bend over. She tries to picture the future but all Tsugumi can glimpse is uncertainty. “Where does this end for Roselia?”

Sayo considers the question. “I don’t know. Honestly I never dared dream this far.”

“Sayo.”

Sayo catches the sympathy in Tsugumi’s voice. “No that wasn’t meant… I just…” She stops to gather her thoughts. “Sometimes I feel so lucky it would be impossibly ungracious to want more. You, Roselia, this tour, our life. I don’t deserve it.”

“Yes, you do,” Tsugumi says insistently, almost habitually. “Sayo you—”

“I’ll rephrase.” Sayo cuts off Tsugumi’s practiced reminder. “I don’t feel as though I deserve it. Not the success and, most of all, not you. I’m afraid one day I’ll… I’ll do something that proves myself right. I fear I may be a rotten person, Tsugumi-san.”

Tsugumi flashes to nights spent cradling Sayo, coaxing her through the worst her brain can manifest. She wrestles away the urge to call her partner’s name again and waits.

“Hearing you say ‘I miss you’ makes me so happy. You’re hurting, but I’m glad. Isn’t that awful?” Sayo asks in a way that longs to be corrected like a child begging for comfort from her parent.

“I feel the same way.” The first thing Tsugumi felt when she heard those words from Sayo was relief. “I’m glad you miss me.” Even though it hurts you. Tsugumi leaves her last thought unspoken because even as she comforts Sayo the same guilt creeps over her. She can hear the pain she’s caused Sayo and it cuts at her because in some ways she longed for it. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s a contradiction.”

“But it’s true.”

“It is.” Tsugumi looks around the room, around their home. It’s been less than a year but it’s already theirs. They chose those curtains, this couch, that coffee table, the tv, the shelves, the bed, even the soap, they chose and they chose and they chose again. Life is just choices and Tsugumi’s already made the most important one. “But I choose you Sayo-san. Everyday. Even if sometimes that hurts us. And if there’s a contradiction in that, then that’s just where love lives.”

“Tsugumi…” The way Sayo says her name is so pure—like Tsugumi is the umbrella in her storm.

“People ask where you want to be in five years like we always need to be moving forward. But I don’t want that, Sayo, in five years I want to be right where I am now.” She breathes so deeply she thinks her lungs will burst. “My dream is us. It’s you and me in the coffee shop, you and me and a big drooling dog on our couch and someday you and me and a little girl who hates carrots and can’t handle bitter things. I want that Sayo.” She’s not sure when she started crying but she can’t stop the tears running heavy down her cheeks. “I want that more than I’ve ever wanted anything. And I’m scared because I’ve never asked you if you feel the same way.”

“Tsu-Tsugumi-san,” Sayo stammers. “Was that a proposal?”

She knows Sayo can’t see her but Tsugumi still grabs a dog shaped throw pillow to cover her face with. “I don’t know, maybe,” She squeaks and struggles to push her embarrassment aside with honesty. “I’ve wanted to marry you since I was sixteen and I want to be married to you when I’m sixty. I love you more than I hate being away from you.”

“I want that more than I’ve ever let myself want anything.” Sayo chokes on her confession. “But I want this too. I want to be here for Roselia. I have to know how far we can go. I have to. So I can be the person who stays by your side forever. But I don’t know how long that will be.”

A single spark flares into a bonfire inside Tsugumi’s chest—the same spark that lit all those years ago when she told her friends they should start a band. “Then I’ll wait. I’ll wait for you, no matter how long it takes. I’ll grow our business! I’ll take care of our home, our family, and I’ll make sure you always have a place to come back to. I promise you Sayo, as long as you we say hello more than we ever say goodbye, we’ll be okay.”

Sayo sniffs. “You’re the most incredible person I know. If I can spend my whole life trying to catch up with you I’ll be the happiest woman in the world”

Tsugumi clutches at her burning cheeks. “Now who’s proposing…”

“Don’t give me your answer yet. Not until the last day of my last tour.”

She giggles. “You know my answer.”

“And you know mine.”

The promise of a promise. Not quite how Tsugumi pictured it but still, it’s theirs.

But reality pokes through. Sayo sighs softly, “I want you to know: we are currently planning another tour. So many people have come out to support us, it’s clear that we, that Roselia, have places to be.”

“Good.”

Sayo makes a little strangled surprised sound. It’s precious.

“I want the whole world to see how amazing you are.” Tsugumi declares proudly. She softens. “And then I want you to come home.”

“I want to come home.”

“Sayo, tell me every time you want to come home. No matter how you think it will make me feel.”

“If I tell you every time you’ll never hear the end of it.”

Tsugumi lets her head fall to the back of the couch, feeling the tension ebb out of her heart as her body relaxes around it. “I’ll never get tired of hearing it.”

“I want to come home. I want to come home. I want to come home.”

“Sayo!” Tsugumi giggles as she shouts. Even Sayo can tease.

“I’m only doing what you told me to,” Sayo says with an air of feigned innocence.

“You’re so obedient.”

“It helps that I want to obey you very much.” Her voice grows lower. As the source moves from Sayo’s head to her chest, it strikes Tsugumi lower and lower too.

Tsugumi squirms on the couch, crossing her legs very, very tight. “Anything I say?”

“Yes.”

She swallows hard, “Are you alone right now?”

“Yes.”

With the slightest, slightest movement, Tsugumi cracks her legs open. Her free hand skims down her torso to the waistband of her pajama pants. She looks around the room—it’s the living room but it’s her living room and it’s not like there’s anyone around—and dips her fingers down. She sighs dreamily, letting her mind fill with her girlfriend’s image. “Sayo…”

“What do you want me to do to you?”

“I—”

“Tsugumi. Thanks for the shower.” Ran walks out from the back in a pair of Sayo’s jeans and one of Tsugumi’s old t-shirts with a towel around her neck. She stops short, taking in the scene with a sort of eerie calmness probably forged by years of being Tomoe and Himari’s best friend. “I see you’ve made up with Sayo-san.”

“Mitake-san!” Sayo squeaks, voice jumping from its lowest registry to its highest in a single word.

“N-No! Ran-chan it’s not what you think!”

Ran clears her throat and points to Tsugumi’s wayward hand. Tsugumi yanks her hand up, holding her palm out in surrender. Tsugumi shrinks down between her shoulders. “We hadn’t started yet?”

“I can leave.” She nods to the door, eyes very much fixed to the ceiling.

Tsugumi presses her miscreant hand to her very, _very_ hot cheek. “No the moment’s passed now.”

“Then, I’ll make us some coffee.” Ran pauses before leaving and smiles. “But I’m glad Tsugumi.”

“Thank you.” She can’t look Ran in the eyes—and she might never again—but Tsugumi’s heart is calm for the first time in a month.

“Tsugumi-san.” Sayo calls out, reminding Tsugumi she’s still on the line. “Do you have to go?”

“I probably should,” More disappointment slips out than Tsugumi intends. “Maybe I’ll see if Ran wants to have another conversation with Yukina-san?”

“I’d like that.” Sayo hums warmly, “Tsugumi-san. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Tsugumi whispers into the phone, “and I miss you.”

“I want to come home.”

“Soon.”

“Soon.”

* * *

**55 Days left**

“Yo! Tsugu!” The bell chimes as Tomoe bounces through the front door with the sort of energy that makes sure every customer knows she’s entered. At least, most of the crowd watched her grow up anyway. The old folks who remember when Tomoe couldn’t reach the counter raise their cups in greeting.

Tsugumi stops wiping down the countertop and smiles. She ducks below and grabs a bundle she tucked away that morning, holding it out just as Tomoe reaches her. “Here you are Tomoe-chan!”

Big arms pull Tsugumi into Tomoe’s chest—she gets more muscular every time Tsugumi sees her.

“You’ll squish it.” Tsugumi giggles, happily allowing herself to be a little manhandled by her friend.

Tomoe finally relinquishes her hug and pulls the carefully wrapped bundle to her chest. “Hehe, can’t believe you made us lunches.”

“It’s just leftovers.”

“Your leftovers are better than anything we can cook at home,” Tomoe grins and shifts the two lunch boxes under her arm. “Seriously, Himari’s gonna flip, heh.”

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll have more.”

“You’re spoiling us!” Tomoe laughs. “Sayo should go on tour more often.” Her face falls. “S-sorry! I didn’t mean that!”

“It’s okay.” Tsugumi’s heart doesn’t hurt the way it would have a few days earlier. “I’ll focus on getting you and Himari-chan to eat healthier for now!”

“There’s our Tsugu.” Tomoe claps a hand on Tsugumi’s shoulder. “Good to have you back.”

**43 days left**

“Detective Aoba?” Himari levels her pretend magnifying to Tsugumi’s eye. “Any conclusions?”

Moca taps her chin, leaning over the counter on her elbows as Tsugumi tries to busy herself with the last few orders of the day. “Yes, Detective Udagawa. Happy, loose disposition. A certain glow around the cheeks. Aaand Ranny’s been complaining about Yukina a lot more than usual. Conclusion…”

As if practiced many, many times, Moca and Himari raise their pointer fingers at once in accusation while simultaneously shouting: “Tsugu’s getting laid!”

There’s a hoarse cough from one of the lingering regulars still sitting in the store.

“Is this really the time?” Tsugumi makes a note in her increasingly long mental list of offended patrons to offer his next coffee for free.

“She’s not denying it.” Himari gasps.

Tsugumi lets a little mysterious smile grow on her lips. “I wouldn’t want to lie.” Then she turns around as quickly as she can to hide her red face behind a freshly brewed cup of coffee as Moca and Himari gawk behind her.

**27 days left**

There’s a box waiting on Tsugumi’s doorstep when she gets home. It’s addressed to the Hazawas in an excited hand that Tsugumi immediately recognizes as Hina’s. She likes to send Tsugumi and Sayo weird things she finds on her travels around the world: sometimes a lost relic of an ancient civilization and sometimes a neat looking rock. Hina’s judgement on ‘cool’ remains a wide reaching mystery.

She unwraps the package on the coffee table, sliding out a slim black box about the length of her forearm. Tsugumi can hardly guess what could be inside. It’s about the width for a bottle of wine but that’s far too normal a present for Hina to give. She unfolds the card from the top:

“For you and sis to enjoy! - Your Big Sister”

The words bring a smile to Tsugumi’s face. Hina hasn’t quite convinced Tsugumi to call her ‘big sis’ but she can’t help but be tempted. Even if the way she shows her love is odd, Tsugumi knows she’s cherished by her almost sister-in-law. She opens the box.

Tsugumi’s eyes bug out in her skull. That is not a bottle of wine, though it is about as girthy. Tsugumi lifts the _thing_ with both hands. It’s heavy, weighty, despite the flexible material. That’s probably a good thing? One wouldn’t want something too fragile down there.

She drops it with a squeak and a thud. What exactly is she thinking about doing with it? For one thing it’s way too big and for another…

The possibilities make her reconsider and let her mind _wander_.

Eventually, after much thought, she stuffs it in the back of the closet. She’ll show it to Sayo when she gets home and maybe they can _discuss_ those possibilities together. And then she’ll have a lengthy and probably pointless conversation with Hina about _boundaries_.

But one thing is certain: Sayo can never, ever know it came from Hina.

**15** **Days left**

“Welcome to the first ever Family Game Night!” Tomoe slaps her kitchen table, her gathered friends wince. The monopoly board Himari so carefully set up bounces under her wife’s hand, she tries to inch it away but Tomoe’s enthusiasm finds it again.

“We’ve played board games before…” Ran sighs, yanking her soda away from the table before Tomoe can knock that down too.

“Not like this! Just us! No girlfriends!” The board shudders again.

“But Chisato is here?” Ran points to Moca’s quiet companion sitting just to Tsugumi’s left. She came at Tsugumi’s request actually—Moca’s girlfriend remains an enigma that Tsugumi wants very badly to solve.

“Uh…” Tomoe is torn between rudeness and accuracy. “Chisato doesn’t count.”

Moca snickers. “That’s just Afterglow without Sayochi.”

“No girlfriends sounds more inclusive!”

“By what definition!” Ran smiles too wide for a real argument but she still plays to win. “Besides with that name we’d better be keeping you and Himari at arm’s length.”

Tomoe gasps. “We’re married! It’s different!”

“That’s just biased!”

“Aw come on! I’m just trying not to say all the Family without Sayo!”

The group goes silent. All eyes—except Chisato’s ever polite gaze—turn to Tsugumi with hushed concern.

Their worry, as usual, is sweet but totally, completely unfounded. Tsugumi just smiles and shakes her head. “It’s okay. Next time we play, Sayo-san will be home!”

**1 day left**

Tsugumi is giddy. Giddy in the way she was as a kid trying to stay up on Christmas Eve to catch a glimpse of Santa. Even though she knows nothing will happen tonight, she can’t help but want to stay on the couch again and watch the door just in case. After all, there’s just one more night until Sayo comes home.

She tries to turn the excited energy buzzing through her into something useful by cleaning her apartment top to bottom but by the third sweep-through it’s clear she’s done everything she can. It’s like her mother always said: Santa comes faster if you sleep. But Tsugumi hardly knows how she’ll manage to sleep like this and besides, Sayo is going to call in exactly two hours and twenty seven minutes. She checks the clock approximately every two minutes to be sure. Time runs slower than usual this evening.

Tsugumi finally collapses on the couch, committed to eating away the annoying extra hours with some mindless television. She pulls her new green knit blanket around her—painstakingly knit by Himari as an early Christmas gift before she declared the hobby “an oppressive patriarchal trick”—and tries to settle in for a quiet night.

Then her phone buzzes on the coffee table and Louder begins to pour from the speakers.

Her ears perk. Tsugumi reaches for the phone but she pauses before she picks it up. It has to be Sayo because no one else under forty uses the phone as a phone but Sayo is always exactly on time with her phone calls. First she worries, Tsugumi’s brain dives to the worst possible conclusions—and then she picks up.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Tsugumi-san.” Sayo’s voice is a hot chocolate on the coldest, bitterest day. It’s a little overcast shadow in the scorching sun. It’s enough to make Tsugumi sixteen years old and hoping beyond hope that this amazing girl will like her back all over again.

Tsugumi curls in on the couch around the phone clutched to her ear with the blanket hugged tight around her shoulders, already discarding the worries that jumped into her mind. “Sayo-san! You’re so early today.”

There is a warm chuckle on the other end. “Tsugumi-san.” Sayo repeats, as though she’s savoring every syllable. “Look outside.”

The blanket falls away as Tsugumi jolts up, heart rocketing. There is a risk to hoping and Tsugumi knows that but she also knows that Sayo has never once acted careless with her heart on purpose. Slowly, deliberately, Tsugumi lifts off the couch and steps to the window, pushing aside their handpicked curtains, careful not to knock over any of the dozen plants Ran gave them. There is only one thing in the world Tsugumi wants to see beyond those curtains.

“May I come up?”

And there she is on the sidewalk below: Sayo Hikawa.

If she is a specter she’s very convincing with her guitar over her shoulders and her hideously practical suitcase as her side. That gorgeous hair of hers is loose and doing very little to keep her warm as an early winter—or is it late fall—snow falls around her, framing her face in an old movie star glow. She stands there huddled into a thick black wool coat she didn’t leave with, trying to find Tsugumi’s face in the windows.

It doesn’t matter that they’re two stories apart, Tsugumi can see the way Sayo’s face changes when they find each other, mouth rising into a helpless smile.

Tsugumi barely trusts her voice but she manages to whimper, “Please.”

For an agonizing minute Sayo disappears from sight. Tsugumi holds herself back from pressing an ear against the front door, but still she listens closely for the familiar sounds of Sayo on the stairs—the soft patter of her steps, the clunk of her suitcase dragging behind. She can’t quite catch her breath, the excitement and anticipation are enough to wind her.

The lock turns. The knob rustles. The door opens.

And there’s Sayo. A little winded. A little ruffled from her trip with raw chapped cheeks and red ears waiting at the threshold to be invited inside to her own home.

Tsugumi rocks back on her heels, all the excitement she just felt so strongly transforming into nervous uncertainty. She thought she had time, a whole twenty four hours to gather herself and plan their reunion. Now all she has is a thundering heart and a very real girlfriend in front of her.

A very _cold_ girlfriend.

Tsugumi gestures inside quickly, saying with her hands what she struggles to find the words for. Sayo steps through the door, setting her suitcase aside, and simply stands and stares. She’s just as lost as Tsugumi. How do they reunite? How do they find each other after so long apart?

“Tsugumi-san.” Sayo’s voice, unfiltered by complex machinery and thousands of miles, is almost too much for Tsugumi to bear. Her knees shake. It’s her.

They collapse into each other, arms wrapping so tight around each other that they’re the only thing keeping each other standing. Sayo’s scent overwhelms Tsugumi after months of clinging to its fading presence on her pillow. She’s here in the flesh, the wonderful warm, living, breathing flesh. Not just a shaky video sent by Lisa, or a quick interview Himari found or a voice on a phone from a thousand miles away. The world is in Tsugumi’s arms again and she never wants to let her go again.

“You’re here,” Tsugumi whispers, voice high with wonder as she struggles to believe what she sees and feels. “How are you here?”

Sayo rubs the rough cold from her cheeks with one hand as she refuses to let Tsugumi completely out of her grasp. “Imai-san booked an earlier flight.” Sayo shuts the door behind her. “Just for me.”

“They’re still in Korea?” Tsugumi pulls the suitcase from Sayo’s protesting grip and rolls it towards their bedroom.

“She was, how did she put it, ‘exhausted of my abandoned puppy eyes’ and told me to ‘go home to my owner’. They’ll be sightseeing the last two days.”

Tsugumi flushes at Lisa’s choice of words but appreciates her nonetheless. She owes Roselia’s bassist at least three of those angel food cakes she loves so much. Just imagining trying to convince Sayo to leave early is enough to send a pang of pain through Tsugumi’s brain. The others probably had to step in too. Sayo wouldn’t be Sayo if her sense of duty didn’t keep them apart.

“You’re missing out on that for me?” She turns around in time to see Sayo pull off her new coat, flattening it with her hand before hanging it by the door on Sayo’s hook next to Tsugumi’s  
Sayo looks at Tsugumi as if she doesn’t understand the question. “I am not missing out on anything.”

Tsugumi has no idea what to say. No idea what to do. Reunions are a new facet of their relationship she has to figure out and right now she’s learning an awful lot very quickly. So Tsugumi falls back on what she knows best. “Can I make you some coffee?”

* * *

Tsugumi’s sigh shudders over the sink as she fills her little red and black kettle up and lets the adrenaline of their sudden reunion transform into a special sort of anxiety. Tsugumi pivots to the stove, setting down the kettle while glancing just over her shoulder again and again to make sure Sayo hasn’t decided to head back to South Korea while she turned away. But she’s still there, watching Tsugumi from her favorite kitchen stool with that gentle smile as Tsugumi fumbles around the hallway with an oven they call a kitchen.

“Is… Is preground okay?” Tsugumi digs through the many bags of beans in the cabinet—piles and piles of gifts and samples. “No. Don’t answer that. I can get out the grinder. I should get out the grinder. I’ll get out the grinde—”

“Tsugumi-san,” Sayo’s voice neatly cuts through the noise in her head. “Preground is fine.”

Her breathing comes a little easier. She reaches on the tips of her toes into the back of the coffee cabinet and picks out the perfect blend—medium with undertones of cherry and chocolate—for coming home after a long trip. She holds the bag tight to her heart for a brief moment as she tries to slow her heart but Sayo’s eyes on her back feel like hands over her body and it’s hard to focus on anything else.

But right now, there is coffee to distract herself with. Tsugumi pivots around the waist to the other side of her miniature kitchen. The dish cabinet squeaks open. It’s half mugs. Everyone always assumes Tsugumi would love a mug for a gift, failing to see how it’s a little like giving a butcher knives for every holiday—she has what she needs and no one could ever pick out a better tool. But Tsugumi is Tsugumi so she accepts each one graciously and packs them tighter and tighter together, just in case someone comes to check. Her good manners forbid her from clearing them out but sense keeps her reusing the same four in front over and over. But now she reaches beyond the usual rotation for a pair of slender matching mugs—one chocolate brown, the other mint green—a first anniversary gift from Sayo. Perhaps occasionally mugs do make good gifts after all.

Sayo makes a pleased sound of recognition as Tsugumi lays the cups on the counter. Tsugumi smiles and looks over her shoulder.

The woman on the stool certainly looks like the same Sayo who left three months before, sitting as rigidly regal as one can on a backless seat. Same long teal hair draping over her shoulders and around her back with a neatness Tsugumi can never manage with a quarter of the length. But it’s not quite the same, somewhere on her trip Sayo got a haircut, just short enough that only someone intimately familiar with its length would notice. How much else has changed? Tsugumi’s eyes comb over Sayo’s body. The black button down is familiar, Tsugumi remembers the cool feel of the plastic buttons just by sight, but the pants—tight and promising—are new and welcome. And on the inside who knows what’s shifted.

Sayo coughs politely. Tsugumi realizes she’s staring and snaps her eyes away from Sayo’s body to the face she knows better than her own. Moca has a hundred nicknames for Sayo, every one a teasing poke at her sour, grumpy nature but she’s always smiled for Tsugumi. It’s a smile so soft and small that maybe Sayo doesn’t know it’s there. That’s her same as always. Even if she is thinner around the cheeks—how gaunt she’s gotten without Tsugumi’s home cooking—and the bags under her eyes are so much darker, she’s still Sayo.

Tsugumi holds back her instinct to reach out and soothe those bags with her thumbs. There is an implicit permission to touch in a long term relationship like theirs but Tsugumi can’t keep away from the feeling it needs to be regranted. No matter how desperate she is for Sayo’s touch, she waits. They’re awkward time travelers, expected to snap back together as if there aren’t three months of life in the space between them.

“Tsugumi-san,” Sayo’s eyes flicker hesitantly over Tsugumi—lingering on her lips.

But it’s true for both of them. They’re in it together, even if ‘it’ is just a bit of mild awkwardness. That’s what a partnership is.

“Sayo-san,” Tsugumi shakes her head and nudges herself forward, letting the points of Sayo’s bent knees press into the front of her thighs. Artifice falls apart at their touch.

The guitarist reaches out and wraps her fingers around Tsugumi’s wrist. Slowly she turns Tsugumi’s hand over, the tips of her fingers lightly passing over blue beating veins. Tsugumi’s hand flexes at the sensation—so much for so little. Sayo tugs just enough to lift the wrist to her lips and press against the point of Tsugumi’s pulse with a brief, electric kiss. Green-gold eyes drift from Tsugumi’s hand to her own eyes as her lips drag up to the center of Tsugumi’s palm. The look sends just as much electricity through Tsugumi as the touch.

Tsugumi wills her other hand to unfurl so she can brush back Sayo’s hair, letting her fingers linger in those tresses. As soft as she remembers. Sayo pushes against Tsugumi’s hand, eyes fluttering closed with a content sigh.

So suddenly Tsugumi realizes how silly it is to be nervous around someone she loves with her whole heart, who loves her the same in return. Her hand drifts around Sayo’s face until Tsugumi’s thumb presses so lightly against her lower lip but its enough to make their cheeks burn with matching blushes. With a slight flick of her thumb, Tsugumi tilts Sayo’s chin up and brings their lips together.

It’s a remarkably chaste kiss for how long they’ve waited but it’s everything they want—almost more erotic in its innocence. Tsugumi is ready to melt into Sayo’s hands there on the spot but there’s coffee to be made so she tears herself away, burying her fluster in caffeine.

She pulls down two metal drip filters from the shelf and fits them over the two mugs. With a quick barista’s eyeball measurement she fills them with just the right amount of ground beans, enjoying the earthy scent wafting past her nose. All she has to do is wait for the kettle.

“Sayo-san?” Tsugumi gasps. There are hands behind her, sliding over her rear, down her thighs and massaging those tight muscles before encircling her waist.

Sayo’s voice, husky yet chill-inducing, pours into her ear, “I missed you.” Her hands press against Tsugumi’s stomach—the tips of her fingers heralding the firm press of her palm pulling Tsugumi back against Sayo’s chest until she is cradled in the soft swell of Sayo’s chest.

Tsugumi gasps, a little from surprise, a lot from the contact. “I missed you too.” Her hand falls to cover Sayo’s as her neck curves back as Sayo reaches forward. Their lips find each other, slowly, cautiously at first so they can relearn the topography of each other’s lips. But soon Sayo’s mouth begs entry and Tsugumi can’t beckon her inside fast enough. Sayo’s hand tightens around Tsugumi’s waist as her tongue strokes the roof of her mouth. Her spare hand falls to the countertop for balance.

Tsugumi can barely breathe through the onslaught but she doesn’t dare pull away—not when Sayo is here, feeling like she could disappear in a blink. She presses back into Sayo, grinding her hips, desperate for more contact. Sayo is fire on her back and Tsugumi wants to burn.

She whimpers when Sayo pulls away but her lips don’t leave Tsugumi for long. Instead they travel down her neck, starting with a kiss to the side of her jaw and turning into a hot suckling at her neck that leaves Tsugumi’s toes curling and both her hands flying to the countertop to hold on for dear life.

Sayo pulls away for a fraction of a second too long and Tsugumi reaches back and jerks Sayo back with her fingers tangled in that long teal hair. Sayo breathes in sharply.

“Don’t stop,” Tsugumi moans as Sayo’s teeth nibble over her collar. “Don’t…”

Sayo’s head rises, lips hovering just above Tsugumi’s earlobe with slow, heavy pants tearing into her ear, each one like a claw down her spine. “Don’t?” Sayo questions with a cruel tease in her voice.

“Sayo-san!” Tsugumi squirms with the sounds. The last functioning part of her mind pushes their mugs away so she doesn’t spill the coffee all over when Sayo takes her against the counter. Her stomach twists. Sayo better be about to take her against the counter or Tsugumi’s going to have to take things into her own hands. “Please.”

Sayo’s fingers tread along her belt making Tsugumi’s stomach curl with every delicate touch. But she can’t tease for long, her heart is too kind for it. “Tsugumi-san.” She slips the leather belt from its buckle and kisses her girlfriend’s nape. “I missed you.” The belt falls open and Sayo’s hand starts on the brass buttons as Tsugumi tries to help things along with a wriggle of her hips.

Every touch from Sayo makes her need those pants off as fast as possible so Sayo’s hand, or mouth, or knee, or she’d even settle for an elbow right now, can take its place. She needs the relief and she needs it from Sayo.

The button pops open. Sayo’s thumb lingers over the zipper before coaxing it down with agonizing slowness. Then she pauses.

Tsugumi doesn’t like that. She turns her head back and grabs Sayo by the chin, forcing their mouths together as she guides Sayo’s slim hand down to the parting of denim and the quickly soaking cotton underneath. She needs Sayo to feel what she’s done to her.

Sayo’s hand slips into Tsugumi’s pants and slowly, agonizingly, cups her sex. The slight touch is enough to make Tsugumi break their kiss with bucking hips and fall over the counter in a messy, breathy, cry. “Sa-Sayo-san.”

She presses forward, using her body to pin Tsugumi to the marble, stroking her over her underwear as she nibbles around Tsugumi’s ear. Every touch from Sayo is a jolt of pleasure. A reminder of a love so wonderful it makes Tsugumi feel lonelier in retrospect. She wants more, wants Sayo to bring her fingers in and—

_**EEEEEEEEEE** _

The kettle squeals as the water inside reaches temperature. Sayo jumps back and Tsugumi swears to herself it’s the last time they’ll ever be interrupted.

* * *

“And then Tomoe-chan said, ‘I’m the banker and I’m charging you 20% interest!’ and Ran-chan said ‘you don’t even know what that means’! And the whole game got derailed until Moca-chan launched a bank heist and took over.” Tsugumi smiles over her mug and tucks her legs underneath her as she cuddles into the corner of the couch. Her eyes slide to Sayo, sipping and listening quietly by Tsugumi’s side. “I think Chisato-san is going to bring over some fancy german board game next time. Moca-chan’s monopoly strategy might have broken her a little.”

They’ve retreated to the living room with coffee cups—and not each other—in hand. The moment in the kitchen was… lovely but Tsugumi is more than a hormone addled lust monster. Probably.

There’s so much to catch up on. Those other activities can wait. It’d be easier to convince herself of that if Sayo’s hand didn’t rest so casually on her knee, sending sparks up Tsugumi’s body with every little flex of Sayo’s fingers.

“I’m glad you have your friends.” Sayo lifts her mug to her lips and melts into the couch as she sips, strict posture loosening bit by bit. Her expression grows warmer and softer with every drop of Tsugumi’s coffee. Tsugumi pretends not to notice how Sayo’s tongue flicks out over her bottom lip after each sip. She pretends the heat on her cheeks is from the coffee too.

“They mi-missed you too.” Tsugumi’s voice catches as Sayo begins to draw small circles with the tips of her fingers over Tsugumi’s knee. “Himari-chan is planning a-a welcome home party for all of you.” The fingers inch upwards. Tsugumi bites her lip. “Don’t tell I think it’s a surprise.”

Chills run up from Sayo’s hand. “I wouldn’t.”

“H-How was S-Seoul?” Tsugumi wracks her brain for the city as Sayo’s hand robs her of thought, moving up the outside of her thigh and turning those chills into desperate heat.

“Tsugumi.”

Everything is so much deeper without the suffix. The last barrier between them.

“Sayo,” Tsugumi practically whimpers the name.

She presses her hand down, fingers scraping over Tsugumi’s jeans. The pressure, oh the precious pressure hits Tsugumi like a wave. Sayo sets down her coffee and turns to fully face her girlfriend. “I don’t want to talk about Seoul right now.”

Neither does Tsugumi.

Sayo kisses her and something inside Tsugumi bursts. Every part of Tsugumi boils up at once and she wants so desperately to pour it all into Sayo. Instead, she kisses back greedily, mouth and tongue inviting Sayo inside in moments because she can’t stand the waiting any longer. She wants everything Sayo will give and will still crawl after more if it isn’t enough.

Tsugumi was raised to be selfless, Sayo taught her the joys of being greedy with someone who wants to give.

They shift, Sayo coaxing Tsugumi firmly against the armrest with a tug at her waist as she climbs on top and straddles her girlfriend’s waist.

“Tsugumi,” Sayo says in such a begging whimper that Tsugumi might as well be the last drop of water in a desert for how deeply Sayo wants to drink her up.

Sayo drags down Tsugumi’s body until her lips are level with the belly button covered by the white linen shirt Tsugumi never changed out of after work. Quick fingers tug her shirt loose from the pants, unbuttoning from the bottom up and stopping as soon as Sayo has access to the softness of Tsugumi’s belly.

A little awful voice in the back of Tsugumi’s head bemoans the very plain shirt and pants she’s wearing and the awfully spartan underwear underneath—hardly worthy of a welcome home after a long journey. And Sayo can easily see how much fuller her stomach has grown with the excess of leftovers in her absence and when compared with someone like Sayo—so gorgeous she’d make a goddess give up—Tsugumi is just… Tsugumi. Tsugumi almost wants to shove Sayo away in shame.

But then Sayo kisses down her abdomen with awe in her eyes. Every bit of exposed skin is worth worshiping to her. Her hands move possessively to Tsugumi’s sides and settle on her waist with the hungry pressure of someone barely keeping herself from tearing off the fabric. She stops, hovering over Tsugumi’s belly button breathing hot air over her skin.

Her grip grows hesitant. There’s a pinch at her hip, nails digging in to keep from doing something else. Sayo is holding herself back, holding back how much she wanted to pin Tsugumi and take and take. Sayo chews on her lower lip, eyes suddenly darting to the side as if contemplating an escape. Tsugumi’s hands snake into Sayo’s hair, pulling firmly—not forcefully—at the roots until she looks up.

“Sayo, where are you?”

Sayo frowns and falls forward onto her elbows. One hand reaches up to cup Tsugumi’s cheek with the sort of tenderness she can’t help but lean into. “I’m here.”

“All of you Sayo.” Tsugumi tugs her partner’s hand from her cheek to just above her covered heart. She reaches for the other arm—the one bearing all of Sayo’s weight—and pulls. “I want all of you.”

Sayo jerks down with a grunt. She knocks the air from Tsugumi’s lungs but Tsugumi bears her weight like a blanket—however little weight is left. It’s a good sort of breathlessness. She clings to Sayo’s back, holding her so tightly she can’t dare break away. They both have their insecurities and they both have the ability to chase the other’s away. “Every part of you Sayo.” The tension in Sayo’s body starts to disappear. “Don’t hold anything back—just like on stage.”

“On stage?” Sayo murmurs into Tsugumi’s ear. “Am I someone else there?” There’s sweet confusion in her voice—she really doesn’t know.

Tsugumi squirms as much as she can with the pressure of her lover’s body on top of hers. “Y-yes. When you’re on stage you’re so powerful… unleashed.”

The weight lifts away. Sayo rises back up on her elbows, hovering over Tsugumi. “You watch me?”

“I-I find videos online.” It’s so hard to speak when Sayo is so close. “You’re so beautiful. Still you but… more you.”

Air shudders over Tsugumi’s lips, exhaled from Sayo. “I don’t think much when I play.” Sayo kisses her cheek before moving to her ear, sucking Tsugumi’s earlobe between her lips. “But when I do, I think: I want Tsugumi-san to see me.” The words dance along Tsugumi’s ear. “And only Tsugumi-san.”

Tsugumi grabs Sayo’s head between her hands and pulls their lips together—what else can she possibly do with such words?

Sayo’s fingers fumble with the rest of Tsugumi’s buttons as they kiss. She pulls apart Tsugumi’s shirt—not bothering to remove it before her hands grasp Tsugumi’s breasts. Tsugumi breaks away to gasp. Her girlfriend smirks, just a little, and looks down, pouring over Tsugumi’s chest with a hungry sort of reverence.

Three months of frustration rush between Tsugumi’s legs at once. It is very embarrassing to realize that she doesn’t particularly care about the foreplay at the moment, Sayo could take her on the spot and Tsugumi would welcome it. Not that she minds the foreplay.

“R-right there,” she moans as Sayo finds the softest part of her neck and sucks just as her hands rub over the thin material of her tragically spartan bra.

“Nnn—”

Sayo bites down on her collar in time with a pleasantly rough squeeze over her breast.

Tsugumi’s hips begin to move on their own, thrusting up against Sayo’s hips in a bid to get some pressure on that beating center. Sayo licks hotly at the bite she’s made as her eyes trail up. Tsugumi shudders as their eyes meet, a wolf and her prey. Damn, Tsugumi wants to be eaten.

She let her hands fall away from Sayo’s hair, one drifting back up to caress Sayo’s cheek, the other diving for Sayo’s offensively unopened shirt. Tsugumi mashes their lips together as she claws at Sayo’s shirt, only taking enough care not to rip it open. She needs everything at once: skin and tongue and touch and scent. She needs Sayo.

And Sayo knows it. Her hands find the bottom of Tsugumi’s bra and pull up and up until it sits around her collar like a filthy necklace. She can’t even wait to pull it off—Sayo needs Tsugumi that badly and it only makes Tsugumi want Sayo more.

Her beasts are cold and lonely for only a moment before Sayo takes one in her mouth and the other in hand. The contact makes her back arch off the couch. Sayo paws her, playing rough in the kind of perfectly calculated manner that screams ‘Sayo Hikawa’. She doesn’t touch Tsugumi’s nipples, not with fingers, not with tongue. The touch comes close. Rubbing, licking circles around those sensitive buds until they’re teased almost painfully erect. She asked for this. For thoughtful Sayo, wicked Sayo, wearing too many clothes Sayo, but it’s so hard to bear.

Her frustration emerges as a low moan. “Sayo please.”

There’s mercy in Sayo. Tsugumi feels the smile against her breast at the sound of her moans. Sayo rewards her by taking her nipple between her teeth with a nibble that makes Tsugumi’s toes curl. Her thumb coaxes thunderbolts through Tsugumi’s skin, every touch sending electricity directly down to her groin where Sayo’s other hand lingers.

Sayo pauses at the waistband of her pants but only for a fraction of a second before she presses on and follows the smooth curve of Tsugumi’s groin. She cups Tsugumi through her jeans. Even with thick denim between them the pressure is maddening. Tsugumi thrusts against Sayo’s hand, groaning for more touch. She is too in love and too on fire for embarrassment now.

Sayo strokes, barely strong enough to be felt but it’s enough to make Tsugumi want to tear up the couch, throw the upholstery out the window if Sayo doesn’t go down on her immediately. She’s never needed this so much in her life.

“Let me in.”

It’s so perfectly Sayo. Tsugumi gasps, “Please—Sayo. I’m yours.”

The button is almost ripped away. The zipper can’t fly down fast enough and then suddenly her panties are exposed to the air and Tsugumi can feel from the chill just how soaked through they really are. She tries to wriggle everything off but Sayo’s hands hold firm on her hips and the jeans stay put.

“Sayo?”

Her girlfriend slides down her body, nuzzling the skin just above the line of her panties and kisses over the small triangle of black cloth exposed by the folds of her jeans. Hand reach around, grabbing the waistband and pulling it down, down, down until Tsugumi’s pants are locked around her knees, retraining her legs with Sayo’s hands stopping any attempts to move further.

The insecurity flashes back—she’s just so unprepared—but Sayo’s fingers dig into her thighs and her breath is so hot as she starts to nuzzle over Tsugumi’s damp underwear.

Tsugumi forgot what it feels like to be so adored. To have the perfect rapt attention of someone so wonderful.

Sayo mouths over Tsugumi’s underwear. Her mouth is wet and hot and her tongue presses right over Tsugumi’s clothed slit perfectly. Tsugumi rolls her hips against Sayo’s mouth. The pressure is too good to let slip by. She wants to press Sayo’s head down but first she needs those panties OFF.

Sayo has the same idea.

“Up,” Sayo orders softly, lifting Tsugumi’s locked legs up and around her shoulders, tugging her panties loose as she does. Tsugumi gasps as her pelvis rises up, just enough to feel the air underneath before Sayo slips one of their many throw pillows underneath her lower back. Her face hovers just above Tsugumi’s waiting, dripping folds. Every exhale is small torture.

“May I?” Sayo still has something to learn about ravishing. Tsugumi’s answer is to thrust herself into Sayo’s face.

She gets the hint.

The first lick is long, across the whole slit with every centimeter of Sayo’s tongue imprinting itself along her skin. It makes Tsugumi’s eyes roll back and her spine jolts as she grips Sayo’s shoulders so tightly she surely leaves red crescents along her skin.

The next licks are short, calculated to tease around all of Tsugumi’s crevasses. All the while Tsugumi’s trapped by her own jeans, unable to spread her legs as far as she wants—tormented wonderfully by the squeeze it forces. She laps at Tsugumi’s clit and Tsugumi swears she sees stars. Or maybe that’s just Sayo forever burned into her eyes.

Sayo’s tongue twirls in a figure eight, lapping around her clit then diving between her folds, dipping too briefly inside before rounding out again and again in a horribly, wonderful pattern.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Tsugumi chants in time with the rock of her hips rising to meet Sayo’s tongue. Every sweep brings her higher and higher—she swears she can see the peak, it’s almost in her grasp. “Don’t stop.” Sayo wouldn’t but the plea comes out anyway.

If anything, Sayo takes it as a challenge. She pulls Tsugumi closer—manhandling her backside with a roughness Tsugumi craves—as she tries to burrow inside. She mouths around Tsugumi’s entrance, her clit and all the tender skin that pulses with every rapid heartbeat from Tsugumi’s chest. Sayo is liquid on her center—everywhere at once. It’s too much, it’s not enough, over and over until finally, finally it’s exactly right.

“Ah-AH!” Tsugumi cries out when it hits her—the warmth that started in her center finally covers her whole body. She shudders as Sayo continues her onslaught, licking through Tsugumi’s orgasm trying to savor every drop that spills from Tsugumi’s lower lips.

Tsugumi still trembles as Sayo pulls away, lowering her body back down and crawling forward on her elbows. She cradles Tsugumi’s face and kisses her comfortingly—a bitter taste on her lips. Those green-gold eyes glow for Tsugumi with tears in their corners.

Tsugumi giggles and reaches out to wipe them away. “Sayo?”

“I love you so much,” Sayo whispers. It’s such a raw, honest sentiment that Tsugumi almost doesn’t know what to do with it. She wonders, very briefly, if she can live up to such a love.

And then Tsugumi smiles. “Let me show you how I feel.”

* * *

They don’t make it two steps into their bedroom before Tsugumi has Sayo shoved up against the wall with her knee between her legs and Sayo’s hands pinned above her head just centimeters short from knocking down thatcute oil landscape they got cheap at a flea market. Sayo’s tall enough that it takes effort and help for Tsugumi to get her way but she goes along with it, head falling to the side to let Tsugumi leave a wet trail of red circles down to her collar.

Tsugumi normally has the patience of the great Buddha but right now she wants Sayo writhing under her hands and she can’t wait any more. She fumbles with Sayo’s buttons, one by one until she has just _enough_ of her shirt open to cup Sayo’s perfect breasts and kneed.

Air hisses through Sayo’s clenched teeth. “Tsugumi.”

She presses a kiss on the swell of each breast before she leaves them. One hand moves to steady Tsugumi on Sayo’s hip, the other slips into Sayo’s pants and tries her luck along the front of her underwear.

“Tsugumi… Tsugumi!” Sayo pulls her lover’s head up by the chin.

Tsugumi stops, face falling from lust to concern in an instant. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Sayo shakes her head. Her eyes narrow at once before kissing Tsugumi kiss with the sort of languid comfort Tsugumi rushed past. “But we have time.” She whispers into Tsugumi’s lips. “You don’t have to rush.”

“Should I stop?” Her voice begs Sayo to let her continue. Not for even a second does she want Sayo to think Tsugumi wants her any less than Sayo wants Tsugumi.

“… please don’t.” Sayo presses into Tsugumi’s hand—hot and damp on her palm. “Please.”

Her heart swells with pride. That’s her work. Her work for her girl. She presses again. Sayo’s shoulders twitch and her teeth clamp around her bottom lip.

“Sayo-san,” Tsugumi whispers. “Do you like that?” She struggles to think of something flirtier to say—dirty talk has always been a bit beyond them—as she reaches into Sayo’s underwear but as soon as she dips inside her fingers are so soaked in Sayo that her brain draws a total blank. Tsugumi gasps—a moan interrupts halfway through. “You do.”

Sayo’s head turns to the side, her arm pressed against her eyes in a clumsy bid to hide her embarrassment. Tsugumi’s heart flutters and she kisses Sayo quickly—almost too chastely for what her hand is up to.

“You’re so cute Sayo-san.”

“D-don’t say that when you’re—” Sayo stumbles over her words as Tsugumi’s finger slips down her slit and into those folds.

“When I’m what?” Tsugumi asks innocently.

“You—you’re.” Sayo’s breath grows spotty. Her opening flutters around the tips of Tsugumi’s fingers either trying to welcome her inside or beg for her to enter.

“Inside you?”

As Tsugumi enters, Sayo’s full body shudders against the wall. Her fists pound down as her insides clench around Tsugumi’s finger. “Yes!” It’s an answer to the question and a shout of relief. Despite her protests, Sayo needs this now as badly as Tsugumi did on the couch.

It’s so perfectly warm inside Sayo’s passage. So cozy. So Sayo. Without thinking, Tsugumi presses a second finger inside. Sayo’s eyes squeeze shut at the sensation. She’s almost completely dressed and yet so far gone. Tsugumi curls her fingers against Sayo’s walls as if beckoning Sayo into something so wonderful as to be indescribable.

Because it is. Tsugumi’s heart is so full she’s ready for it to burst. She wants it to burst if it means Sayo can understand how deep her love runs. It feels like the only way she can show it. Her Sayo, her loving, perfect, powerful, world touring rockstar, Sayo is coming undone before her eyes. She whimpers with every twist of Tsugumi’s fingers, clings to the wall with every rock of her wrist digging deeper inside.

“Tsugumi…” Sayo’s eyes are hazy and unfocused, gaze cast everywhere but Tsugumi’s face. She looks lonely. Tsugumi can’t bear that.

“I’m here.” Tsugumi guides her back with a kiss and a pat on the cheek. “I’m here, baby.”

The way Sayo’s face lights up when she sees Tsugumi still there, hand pumping, eyes watching, it’s like watching her fall in love again in fast forward. “Tsugumi!”

There’s a spot, a perfect special soft spot inside Sayo and Tsugumi knows the moment she hits it because Sayo goes rigid with a pleasure too overwhelming to vocalize. Sayo’s never loud when it really starts to hit her. She just starts to murmur Tsugumi’s name like it’s the only thing that matters as Tsugumi strokes that spot until her legs shake and she can’t hold herself up any more. All her weight slumps onto Tsugumi’s shoulders as Sayo shudders with ragged breath.

“Good?”

It takes her a moment nestled in the crook of Tsugumi’s neck to find her words. “Perfect.” She nips Tsugumi’s neck: the night isn’t over. “Bed?”

They undress each other on the way to their sturdy queen bed, giggling and petting as if they hadn’t both just made messes of the other in the various places they’re not supposed to. Sayo scoops Tsugumi up around the waist, attacking her neck with tickling kisses as Tsugumi squeals with laughter. She chucks their shirts and bras off to the laundry bin as even in the heat of passion Sayo can’t bring herself to dirty the floor. Tsugumi falls onto their bed embraced by their comforter.

Tsugumi cherishes a glimpse of Sayo’s rear clad only in her boxer-briefs before those too are stripped off. She laughs again, drunk on love, and holds out her arms. “Come here.”

Sayo sinks onto the mattress on her knees, arms limp at her sides. Her eyes flick down and slowly scan up Tsugumi’s body with a barely hidden hunger but she doesn’t pounce. Instead Sayo falls forward, collapsing into Tsugumi’s arms with her head pressed to Tsugumi’s breast. Her arms worm around Tsugumi, hugging her tight with a sense of possession as loud as yelling the word “mine”.

“Good girl,” Tsugumi strokes Sayo’s hair all the way down from the top of her head to the small of her back as she tucks Sayo under her chin. “So good.”

A soft, panting whine rises from her girlfriend, “Tsugumi.”

“Yes, Sayo?”

Sayo swallows. “Say it again.”

“Say what?” Tsugumi teases, tucking a hair behind Sayo’s ears and smoothing it with her palm.

She whines again, looking up with wide eyes and an uncharacteristic pout. The mighty wolf of Roselia reduced to a puppy with a praise kink.

Tsugumi takes pity on her. It’s something they have in common, after all. “You’re so good. So kind.” A kiss to Sayo’s forehead. “So dedicated.” Her temple. “So loyal.” Her jawline. “So beautiful.” Her cheek. “So mine.” Her lips.

The streak of possessiveness is mutual too.

Those are the kind of words that would make Tsugumi drown in her embarrassment any other time but they threw off self-consciousness with their clothes. And they work so well on Sayo. She shudders into their kiss, hands tangling in Tsugumi’s hair and pulling at her roots. Pleasure blossoms down from Tsugumi’s scalp to her cheeks to her chest.

They take their time now, breaking apart to breathe before rejoining each other with unhurried lips and languid tongues again and again. Tsugumi’s hand lazily makes its way to Sayo’s breast where it simply rests as their libidos recharge. It doesn’t take long for Tsugumi to want more again.

Heat grows between their bare bodies despite the cold around them. Tsugumi strokes the roof of Sayo’s mouth a little forcefully with her tongue and the moan she gets in return gets that liquid heat pooling in her center again. She takes a handful of Sayo’s firm bottom and squeezes.

“Tsugumiii,” Sayo groans, hips bucking unconsciously against thigh. She raises her head, panting. “Is this okay?” So sweetly considerate even when she’s dripping on Tsugumi’s skin. “Do you have work tomorrow?”

Tsugumi nips at the soft skin under Sayo’s chin. “I took off the week.”

She feels Sayo swallow under her fingers. “The whole week?” Sayo’s voice pitches up in hopeful disbelief.

“The whole week.”

Sayo’s smile is so radiant, they could power the coffee shop off it for weeks. She scoops Tsugumi up in her arms, rolling them around until she’s the one joyfully trapped under her love.

“Tsugumi!”

“Sayo!”

They call out for each other even though they’re already in each other’s arms. There’s a special joy in saying a name and knowing there will be a response.

Tsugumi kisses Sayo sweetly as her hand slips into the tightness between their bodies. It’s easy to find Sayo’s center with how boldly she thrusts into Tsugumi’s hand. No time is wasted, even with their small infinity. Tsugumi’s fingers gently coax out Sayo’s arousal with short repeated strokes along her slit. She’s rewarded with sticky slickness along her fingers—the kind that self-perpetuates.

Sayo’s easier to slip into now—taking two fingers at once with a third begging entry—a mixture of her wetness and Tsugumi’s weight behind her thrust. Tsugumi braces on her elbow so she can leverage the other in deeper. Her lips hover over Sayo’s, every word she whispers becomes a kiss.

“Good girl.”

Sayo squeezes around Tsugumi with a filthy moan. Those are magic words for Sayo: confirmation that all her imagined crimes are truly just in her head, assurance that she deserves all the love she gets.

“I’m going to put a third one in, okay?” She punctuates the question with a kiss.

“Mmmmm,” Sayo whimpers and nods as an answer.

Tsugumi presses her ring finger to Sayo’s entrance where her pointer and middle fingers stretch Sayo open. Slowly, slowly, she pushes inside. “You’re doing good, so good.”

The words don’t make it easier to get inside but Sayo’s hips jolt up and her glazed eyes try to lock on Tsugumi’s as Tsugumi begins to pump her hand from the tips of her fingers to all the way inside. She has to go slow but that only affects her Sayo more.

With her hair spread beneath her like a teal blanketand her arms clutching Tsugumi’s neck as she tries to follow wherever Tsugumi leads, Sayo is beautiful. Tsugumi says as much. Her praise has turned into a running list of every wonderful thing about Sayo—it’s a list that won’t end. But it’s not enough, Sayo holds back.

“Let go Sayo.” Tsugumi’s thumb strokes the wiry curls on Sayo’s lower lips just before plunging inside and circling her clit with the rough pad. “Come for me.”

She does. Sayo clings to Tsugumi in every way she can with hands, thighs, mouth, and pussy. Tsugumi clings back, tight enough to forget they have two bodies that can be torn apart. But she won’t think about that when they’re together. Sayo won’t let Tsugumi become the sort of person who counts the days they have left with dread—any more than Tsugumi will let Sayo.

It’s harder to pull out than it was to push in—Sayo doesn’t want to let go. But, with a messy, wet and wickedly appealing sound, Tsugumi gets her hand back. She stays poised above Sayo, wiping away the sweat pooling on Sayo brow, cooing in her ear until—

Tsugumi suddenly finds herself flipped on her back with her arms pressed firmly into the sheets and Sayo looming above her—the wolf bites back.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to—”

“No.” Sayo’s voice is low, husky and commanding. “I want you.” Her thumb brushes Tsugumi’s lips, dipping just between them—the tip of her thumb on the tip of her tongue. The other hand travels much, much lower. “And I can feel that you want me.”

It’s easy to forget that Sayo was so recently gone when she is here; warm hands on a cold body. “Ye-yesss,” Tsugumi’s gasps, spine arching as Sayo strokes her clit. “I do, oh Sayo, I do.” She wants and she wants and she wants and she hopes to never be satisfied.

Sayo is so careful in her taking, giving Tsugumi time to breathe as she sinks inside. The fullness of her fingers steals Tsugumi’s breath anyway. Every twitch echoes in pleasure throughout her body and when Sayo starts to move her hand, she takes all of Tsugumi with her.

Something wet strikes Tsugumi’s chest. She struggles to focus but it quickly becomes clear… Sayo is crying. Just a little but enough to make the urge to comfort overwhelm Tsugumi. She reaches up, hazy and lost in the fullness Sayo has given her but she can wipe a tear away with her thumb at least.

“I love you.” Fingertips tremble over Tsugumi’s hand, pressing her palm into Sayo’s lips. Sayo chokes. The tears fall faster. “I never want to love another person the way I love you.”

Tsugumi wants badly to promise she will never have to but it’s not a promise a person can make. Instead, though her hand trembles, she cups Sayo and strokes her back. It’s fumbling and imprecise but they cry out together, some bastardization of their names mixed into one.

It’s like making music again. A little wetter but the principle is the same. Tsugumi listens to her partner, matches the beat she’s laid out for them. Sometimes she misses by just a quarter note but so much more often they touch one another in harmony.

They sing their future together. There will be days to find the words for it. Days and days and days. Days for cleaning the mess they’ve made. For doing two loads of mixed laundry. For cooking dinner for two. For working side by side. For going out with their friends. For nights by each other’s sides. For their life. It’s all she can picture as Sayo strikes her deepest parts and she strokes Sayo in return.All she can do is hold on tight as their bodies arch together and they guide each other home.

What’s left is love and sweat and a tangle of sticky bodies in a pile of limbs and aimless laughter. Tsugumi collapses back onto their bed, arms splayed, chest heaving as she tries to remember how to breathe. Sayo falls beside her, arm still firmly locked around Tsugumi’s waist.

With an exhausted, trembling hand Tsugumi reaches for Sayo’s cheek and smiles. “Sayo, I love you too.” It feels so inconsequential in comparison to their everything. But it’s enough. It’s a promise in and of itself.

Sayo tries to lift herself up but she’s covered in sweat and hickeys with muscles shaking like an earthquake and falls right back down. Tsugumi can barely lift her arms but she still beckons Sayo into them, rolling onto her side and draping over Sayo so she can at least comfortably nuzzle into her chest.

She can feel Sayo smile against her skin. “Are you really going to take a week off every time I come home?”

“Yes. Do you have plans?” Plans other than spending a week in bed with her girlfriend seem almost absurd, though Sayo surely has affairs to put in order.

“No. Not any without you.” Sayo breathes in deeply, savoring their moment together. “But what about the shop? It’s alright for now but when you own it… a week’s revenue…”

“I suppose I might need some help from Roselia.”

“That shouldn’t be an issue.”

“I-I was joking!” Tsugumi can’t keep from smiling at how instantly Sayo offered. “Though I guess, when we’re married Hazawa Coffee will be half yours, Sayo…san so…” Tsugumi bites her lip, praying she wasn’t too forward with that bit.

Sayo chokes, in the way one does when they’re trying not to cry. Silly, when Sayo’s already cried so much but Tsugumi lets her try to hold back. “Yes. I suppose that’s…” She breathes deep, wrapping her hand around Tsugumi’s. “I bought a ring.”

“You—!”

“Imai-san told me to keep it secret but we don’t keep secrets from each other.” She pushes back Tsugumi’s hair with a pure smile.

Somehow, that’s the most embarrassing part of the evening. “Sayo-san… we can keep _that_ sort of secret.”

“I don’t want to.” So blunt yet sweet. “I want to tell you everything. Always.”

“Can I see it?”

“Not yet. Someday.”

“Sayo-san! Now, you’re teasing me…”

A nuzzle to Tsugumi’s cheek. “Maybe a little.” Sayo yawns. “I’m sorry. Even after your coffee I’m exhausted.”

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Tsugumi…-san?” Halfway through the words and Sayo’s already drifting away.

Sayo’s asleep before she can give an answer. With a careful tug, Tsugumi just barely manages to pull their comforter over around them without disturbing her girlfriend. Even if they have to part again and again, it’s these moments that make everything bearable—the goodbyes make the hellos mean more.

Tsugumi lets her eyes close as her chin falls to the top of Sayo’s head, holding Sayo against her chest. It’s funny. She’s naked in the middle of winter but she feels so warm. With a little chuckle under her breath as she joins Sayo in slumber, Tsugumi whispers, “I gave you decaf.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, there will be one last chapter. An epilogue.


	6. Epilogue: All the Time

Nothing makes Sayo’s heart pound like coming home. No matter how many years pass, how many months she spends on tour, it never gets any easier. The homecoming that is. The other parts are much easier now that Roselia has five years of touring under their collective rose ornamented belt. They have the end of the tour down to a routine.

Sayo leaves the day after their last show—leaving Lisa and the others to the final bits of publicity expected of them. They hardly need her for that and besides, Sayo’s absence creates a mystery their fans love to theorize on. The fans seem to think Sayo’s the temperamental wild card of the group. They’d probably be disappointed to find out she’s simply a homebody. But Sayo can’t bother to care what they think. Sayo just wants to go home.

And now she stands outside of her own door too nervous to enter. Her keys are in her hand, her fist around the knob but she can’t take the next step. Her head is too full of what she must have missed. Lives change so much in five months. There are too many what ifs to account for, too many possibilities, and besides, Sayo’s managed to keep a secret for a month and she’s just about to burst so for one brief moment Sayo’s cowardice almost wins out.

Then the door opens for her because when Sayo falters, Tsugumi is always there to push her forwards.

Tsugumi stands there, hand resting on the doorknob, with her face frozen in hope. So quickly that hope melts away into pure, breathless joy as she finds exactly who she was hoping for at the door. “Sayo-san.”

“Tsugumi-san.” She’s waited so long to say that name to this face.

“Welcome home—”

“I’m home—”

They’re in each other’s arms before either can finish. Sayo wraps tightly around Tsugumi’s shoulders, burying her face in Tsugumi’s hair as Tsugumi reaches up on the tips of her toes to press as much of herself against Sayo as possible.

She smells like home—coffee and flour and a bit of sweat because she’s absolutely spent another late day in their shop and has just gotten back—and Sayo has longed for that smell for five months. Sayo breathes in deeply, too giddy to be embarrassed when Tsugumi giggles at the sound.

Reluctantly they pull apart. It’s a bit chilly in the hallway and they have nosy neighbors Sayo doesn’t feel like performing in front of. Tsugumi’s hand slides from Sayo’s neck down the line of her arm until she links their hands and tugs Sayo inside.

As soon as the door clicks shut Tsugumi whirls around, pressing her head against Sayo’s chest. With one long exhale, Tsugumi lets out a burst of air so long she seems to have held for months. Sayo encircles Tsugumi’s waist—hands clinging to her worn cotton shirt—and for a moment they simply rock against the door together.

Sayo opens her eyes and runs a hand through Tsugumi’s long hair—well past her shoulders now. The strands fall between her fingers—so much softer than silk. “Your hair is longer.” She murmurs into the top of Tsugumi’s head.

Tsugumi pulls away from Sayo’s chest and reaches for the ends of Sayo’s neatly trimmed hair. She strokes Sayo’s head, twisting the short hairs around Sayo’s ears. “Yours is shorter.”

“Imai-san helped me trim it.” Lisa helped shave it off the first time too—drunk on a dare, though Sayo’s come to enjoy the breeze on her neck. “I didn’t want to return home with a mullet.”

Laughter. Sayo’s grip tightens at the sweet sound. Tsugumi hums. “Sis looks good with a mullet. I think you might too.”

“Don’t call Hina that, you’re rewarding bad behavior.”

“She stopped by a few days ago.” Tsugumi’s fingers dance on the back of her head.

“I can’t believe her, if she was returning to Japan so soon she could have waited. She followed me to Los Angeles last weekend.” Sayo cranes back into Tsugumi’s touch.

“Did you have fun?”

“She’s a stalker.”

Tsugumi laughs, gently stroking Sayo’s hair. “Maybe a groupie.”

“The same thing,” Sayo grumbles, her eyes drifting shut. It’s been so long but her body remembers those fingers twisting around her hair. Without intention, she lets out a small moan.

Tsugumi lifts away her hand. Sayo opens her eyes and finds Tsugumi looking up with misty eyes and a flushed face. She only whispers “Sayo…” before she leans up and kisses her girlfriend, hands cupping Sayo’s face.

Tsugumi insists at Sayo’s mouth with tongue and pressure. They stumble back against the door. Sayo braces herself as Tsugumi presses on her chest. She’s breathless already but she tries to keep up. Every kiss grounds her in their apartment, in their home, in this reality. This is no dream.

“Sorry.” Tsugumi lingers over Sayo’s lips with a remorseless apology.

Sayo pecks her back in response and taps their foreheads together. “I missed you so much.”

“Me too.” Her fingers pull away from Sayo’s cheek and she steps back. “Let me make you some coffee.”

“I’d like that.” Sayo smiles. The expression comes so naturally around Tsugumi. “I’ve missed that too. Let me help you.”

Tsugumi stops Sayo from following to the kitchen with a playful glare over her shoulder. “If you actually want coffee maybe you should stay put.”

Sayo falls back to the wall with a flush and a smile, mind wandering to the many, many times she’s interrupted Tsugumi as she brews. Not that Tsugumi ever complains but it actually would be nice to have a cup.

She unbuttons her heavy wool coat and hangs it in its proper place along the wall. There’s a special pride in seeing her black coat hang alongside Tsugumi’s chocolate colored one. She’s back home, herself and her coat in their proper place.

Sayo sets her suitcase along the wall and steps out from the entrance to survey her kingdom. She runs her fingers along the scrapbook of frames along the walls: photos, clippings and awards all splayed out for the remembering. Pictures of the two of them—at graduations, weddings, a dozen stolen weekends away—of their parents—the Hazawas smiling and the Hikawas trying—and of their truest families—Afterglow and Roselia dot the wall so frequently a guest could be forgiving for thinking both bands made use of the single bedroom. Besides the photos were the cover of Rolling Stone that declared Sayo a Goddess of Guitar (a title shared half-happily with Hina), the press release for Roselia’s first major album, the article announcing the new ownership of Hazawa coffee, and the Golden Brew award that Sayo insisted Tsugumi let her hang—Tsugumi only relented after she won it the second time. It’s their intertwined lives made manifest, proof of almost a decade spent entangled so closely it’s impossible to tell where one life begins and the other ends.

The hem of her sweater rises from her pants as she stretches. With another stretch she pulls it off entirely, laying it over the top of her suitcase and untucking her button up as she wanders into the living room past the bookshelves stuffed with books on music theory and small business management and every single season of Boppin’ Around The World with Hina Hikawa. Plus the many knickknacks Hina loves to send from places Sayo’s never heard of: dolls and scraps of stone and at least one priceless artifact that Sayo worries her little sister might have stolen.

Sayo settles on their couch, pulling an old knit blanket around her shoulders and settling in to relax in her own home. It’s the sort of luxury she cherishes now. There’s a gentle tinkling of dishes and silverware in the kitchen along with the shuffling sounds of Tsugumi at work. The sounds mix together and wash over Sayo in a comforting wave of home sweet home. It’s so peaceful she could just…

…Sayo wakes up to a steaming cup on the table beside her and Tsugumi at the other end of the couch sipping her coffee and watching with drowsy brown eyes.

Sayo blinks slowly and sleepily with a rare dreamy smile forming on her lips. “Was I asleep long?”

“No.” Tsugumi shakes her head with that perfect smile. “Just a few minutes.” Her foot affectionately taps Sayo’s. “You can go back to sleep.

It’s Sayo’s turn to shake her head. “I want to be with you.” She sits up and stretches out the soreness from her back. “And I would never waste good coffee so thoughtfully made for me.”

The cup is warm in her hand but not too hot to drink—Tsugumi knows the perfect temperature by feeling alone. It’s a cup to be savored and—Sayo turns the mint colored coffee cup over in her hand—a mug to be cherished. Tsugumi holds her matching chocolate brown mug in a wordless toast. To them.

Sayo savors the earthy smell of the dark roast—like damp earth somehow made aromatic—before she sips. It’s Tsugumi’s coffee alright. No one makes a black coffee like her girlfriend—that’s why they have to fight customers away at the shop. The rising steam tickles something deep in her nose, the weird little nerve connected directly to her tear ducts.

Tsugumi shimmies down the couch, presses a coffee bean decorated handkerchief into Sayo’s hand and her thigh against Sayo’s. “Is the coffee no good?” She lays her head on Sayo’s shoulder as Sayo wordlessly wraps Tsugumi in the blanket, beckoning her to share in Sayo’s little warm world.

“No.” Tsugumi knows that, of course, her coffee is perfect. Sayo pinches the bridge of her nose and squeezes Tsugumi’s knee. “I always dream of your coffee. Just sitting by your side, sipping slowly. But I can never taste it. Until this moment, I couldn’t be certain this wasn’t a dream.”

Tsugumi steals her handkerchief back, pressing it to her own eyes quickly. They linger in the moment together, sipping in silence.

But Sayo is only too aware of how their hips touch under the blanket and how Tsugumi’s hand rests on her wrist. Every spot they connect burns with a demanding fire. They don’t always make love on the nights Sayo returns but… well… although Tsugumi doesn’t expect grand feats of sexual prowess… she inspires them in Sayo nonetheless.

Sayo’s eyes drift down to the woman resting on her shoulder: her partner, more beautiful everyday. She almost says it out loud but it’s a little too early in the evening for that much unfiltered sentiment. Besides, she has no doubt before the night is through she’ll have poured her whole heart onto the bed for her love to lay in. Pending Tsugumi’s interest. Green-gold eyes drift down and find half-lid brown eyes watching Sayo’s fingers with rapt attention. Ah. Sayo needn’t worry about interest tonight.

One should never rush a cup of coffee made with such care but… Sayo believes Tsugumi will forgive her if she swallows the last half in two large gulps. She sets the mug back on the table.

At that moment, Tsugumi sets down hers as well, flashing Sayo a quick, hopeful look with her lip set between her teeth.

Sayo shifts under the blanket and reaches around Tsugumi. First she presses on the small of her girlfriend’s back, then she wraps around her waist and pulls tight. Tsugumi is half pulled and half jumps onto Sayo’s lap. Those big brown eyes bat up at Sayo, questioning, trusting and a little expectant. It’s completely impossible not to kiss her when she looks like that. Sayo tilts up Tsugumi’s chin and presses in.

Sayo takes her time. She’s got nowhere to be but here, after all. They rediscover each other’s lips, their tongues, their mouths, kiss by kiss with warm winter coffee on their breath.

Slowly, Sayo slides down the couch until she’s lying across the length with Tsugumi pulling herself on top and lying flush against her, writhing a little with each touch. Sayo’s stomach jumps as Tsugumi’s weight settles over her. She wants that weight, she wants to feel every bit of movement Tsugumi makes. She wants Tsugumi. Always does.

She nibbles at Tsugumi’s bottom lip before pulling away and tilting up Tsugumi’s head to expose her tender slender neck. Sayo nips under Tsugumi’s jaw and kisses her way down, undoing the top button of Tsugumi’s work shirt to get a better taste of her skin. Tsugumi’s neck is so perfect and unmarked and Sayo could never leave it that way. The loving bruises will have to be covered up in the morning but Sayo can’t think to care because when she sucks Tsugumi makes such a wonderful unseemly moan and grinds down against Sayo’s hips. Sayo’s hands fly to Tsugumi’s rear to squeeze and press and, more than anything, encourage. If Tsugumi wants to make a mess of herself, Sayo wants to see her come apart. And if she gets to come apart too that’s just a bonus.

Tsugumi gasps as Sayo nicks her collarbone and struggles for air. “S-Sayo-san—wait!”

At once, Sayo stops. “Tsugumi-san?”

“Bedroom,” she breathes deep, fingers tangling tight in Sayo’s short hair. “Bedroom. Please. Now.”

* * *

The couch is nice but they’re hardly teenagers who have to grope around on whatever surface is available. Though sometimes it’s fun, Sayo thinks to herself as she reaches into the back of their closet and pulls loose a carefully oiled wooden box. It’s a special occasion sort of toy but when Tsugumi’s eyes instinctively fall to the closet, well, that’s a special enough occasion for Sayo.

Her pants fall to the floor with her belt. Sayo picks them up before they can wrinkle and folds them over her arm then hangs them in the closet. It’s a habit but it’s also a performance and she catches the little hitch of air from her audience paying great attention to how Sayo strikes her pants flat. Her underwear goes next. A pleased hum comes from the bed. Sayo pops open the box.

The shaft inside is the same color as Sayo’s hair. It’s the second one the couple owns—they’re not the Udagawas with their treasure chest of unmentionables—and the only one they use. The first was a same colored gift bequeathed by someone who thought it would be funny to give Sayo a large hulking—you know what—that matched their shared hair color. Actually, Hina sent it to Tsugumi which was somehow both better and much much worse. It languished in their closet for months until they got tipsy enough to think it would be fun to try “jamming it in there”, Tsugumi’s words. They got it about four centimeters into Tsugumi before she cried out like she was going to die and Sayo was forced to imagine how she would explain to Afterglow that Tsugumi died impaled on her massive pretend schlong.

Another month later Tsugumi admitted the idea still appealed to her. They picked this one out with much more care in regards to the exact length and girth. But Tsugumi insisted it still match Sayo’s hair.

Sayo weighs it in her hands before affixing it to her trusty leather harness and slipping it on. She tightens the buckles on one side, then the other and then she turns around and chokes on the air.

How on Earth is Sayo supposed to breathe when Tsugumi is lying naked on their bed ( _their_ bed) looking at her like that, low lids and pupils dilated so dark that there’s no iris left—just a void of arousal Sayo wants to dive into. She never really got a hold on breathing when Tsugumi is near anyway. She’s trying deep breathing—in, hold, 1, 2, 3, 4, out—but it always turns shallow on the second inhale. Even from across their bedroom, Tsugumi makes Sayo dizzy.

Sayo will never be able to express how much she misses Tsugumi when she leaves but she’ll try so damn hard.

Tsugumi waits for Sayo with one hand fluttering nervously on her stomach, just barely hovering over the dark—damp—curls over her center, and the other stretches out above her head resting on her pillow. She can’t help but bite her lip at Tsugumi spread open for her—the pain keeps her from jumping forward and attacking on instinct. Patience comes hard won for Sayo. A lifetime of denying herself makes the delay possible. But it still hurts.

Control must be kept in order to be lost. For now, Sayo crosses to the edge of the bed and the drawer by her side of the bed. She sits, back to her lover, and pulls their trusty bottle of lube out, eyeing a very different container hidden beside it. She only needs two pumps to spread completely over the silicon phallus. There’s months of trial and error in that calculation. Sayo’s ever vigilant concern keeps her afraid of anything but excess. She’s ruined more than one set of sheets.

Perhaps the preparation is unromantic to some, but their love has always lived in the details. The towel laid over the sheets is an invitation, the lubrication is a promise. The bed shifts as Sayo wipes her hand clean on an extra towel she fetched from the drawer and her cold back quickly grows warm.

Slender arms wrap around Sayo from behind. Tsugumi’s fingers pick at the buttons on Sayo’s shirt as her breasts press flush against Sayo’s back. If there was any chill still in Sayo’s body, it’s gone now. How could it possibly remain when her body is on fire? Her fingers tense around the sheets to keep a groan from escaping her throat.

“Sayo,” Tsugumi whispers into the back of Sayo’s neck with a smile against her skin. Softly, she nuzzles Sayo’s nape with nose and lips trading off. The touch makes Sayo’s back arch away from her lover but her neck presses oh so closer. The back of her neck is so ticklish and Tsugumi has always delighted in that. Her lips are particularly potent, leaving the memory of her kiss in their wake as they work around Sayo’s neck, up her chin and jawline until they hover just above Sayo’s own lips, tickling her more with each exhale.

Sayo twists her torso, grabs Tsugumi around the waist and pulls. Tsugumi lets herself be guided into Sayo’s lap with a giggle and a wink, reaching up for Sayo’s cheek and bringing their lips together again.

Tsugumi’s greedy tonight. Sayo knows from how her fingers wander, pushing Sayo’s shirt off her shoulders and nimbly stripping away her bra when Sayo’s supposed to be in charge. Not that Sayo could ever deny Tsugumi—not when she makes Sayo feel so very wanted.

Her desire is overwhelming in the way she kisses—like devouring—in the way she grasps—with desperation—and in the way she grinds against the hard _something_ between Sayo’s legs as she straddles Sayo. It’s too embarrassing to name so Tsugumi just calls it:

“You. I want you.”

“You have me,” Sayo teases, nuzzling just under Tsugumi’s ear before kissing a line down her neck.

Tsugumi squirms over her lap, wetness pooling on Sayo’s thighs as she drives her girlfriend to whine, “Sayo please.”

Sayo could never deny Tsugumi, not when she asks with so much need. “Lift your hips.”

With another whine, Tsugumi raises up on her knees, leaving just enough space for Sayo to guide her strap into—

She slides in so easily Sayo is afraid for a half a second she’s done something wrong. The depth of Tsugumi’s arousal is shocking to both of them. The lube suddenly feels excessive. The blush on her cheeks spreads down to her chest—red darting between the freckles like evening stars on a sunset sky. Sayo chases the redness with her fingers, cupping Tsugumi’s breasts with an intentional roughness that makes Tsugumi twist herself on the shaft without Sayo ever moving her hips.

The moan that pours from Tsugumi’s lips can only be called wanton. It’s intoxicating, more than any wine Sayo has had thrust on her, to be wanted as much as she wants. To have Tsugumi look at her with heavy eyes and torn breath, a moment suspended between them before their self-control happily fails.

And it does fail.

“Are you ready?” Sayo breathes into Tsugumi’s ear, a little because there’s a cloying part of her still scared she’s too strong, too forceful even if they’ve been together so long Tsugumi’s body is almost her own.

“Yes, please please Sayo.” Tsugumi moans in response. But it’s mostly because Sayo knows how much Tsugumi likes it when she asks, how it makes wetness leak around the shaft and pour onto Sayo’s thigh. Why assume consent when it is so graciously given over and over again?

Sayo jerks her hips up and Tsugumi’s body bounces. It’s a warning thrust to let Tsugumi adjust but she’s already biting her finger at the first movement. Sayo moves her hands to her lover’s hips and holds her steady as she rocks forward again, heralded with the slick sound of flesh on silicon as she slides in and out.

They fall into a rhythm, bodies rising and falling in tandem. Sayo lifts a hand from Tsugumi’s hip and settles on her breast, rolling a nipple between her fingers in time with her thrusts. Every touch brings forth more beautiful sounds—gasps and moans and babbling and a chorus of ahs and ohs only meant for Sayo’s ears.

“It’s good, you’re so good,” Tsugumi mumbles as she clings to Sayo’s shoulder with her hips pumping. “So gooooooooood,” She groans when Sayo’s hand falls to the junction of her legs and the needy bundle of nerves there. “D-Don’t stop, please.”

“Never,” Sayo promises with a flick of her thumb and a deepening of her strokes. She did this to the woman she loves. She’s been trusted with this most precious side of Tsugumi. Sayo could never let her down.

“Sayo!” Tsugumi calls out with one last thrust left to linger in her depths. She arches back, eyes so wide and white, body shaking and then at once she collapses. Her body falls against Sayo’s, arms stretched over her shoulders, head snug in the crook of Sayo’s neck as she pants—abdomen trembling with every breath.

Sayo’s hands find Tsugumi’s back—one stabilizing on her lower back, the other holding her close below the shoulders. She hugs Tsugumi, still tight inside but unmoving, humming comfortingly into her ear, “I have you. I have you Tsugumi.”

The sound of Sayo’s words makes Tsugumi gasp, soft and breathless. Her voice makes Sayo want to moan, want to fumble under the straps around her hips and touch herself. It is everything. She is everything and Sayo doesn’t know how to tell her. There aren’t words for this feeling, not really. It must be why people make music. This feeling is what music is for: the way her lover’s body feels wrapped around her own. It’s a cliché to say Sayo plays Tsugumi like a guitar; the truth is Sayo can only ever hope to play a guitar as she loves Tsugumi.

“You’re so beautiful,” Sayo whispers to her as she strokes her back. “My good, beautiful girl.”

“Am I?” Tsugumi asks with wide-eyed post-orgasmic wonder.

Sayo kisses her cheek and eases the strap out of Tsugumi. With a light press on her shoulders, Sayo pushes Tsugumi down onto the bed. “Let me show you.”

Tsugumi lays spread beneath her. Sayo’s breath catches. It always does. Her Tsugumi on their bed. _Theirs._

Long brown hairs curl around Tsugumi’s fingers and she waits for Sayo to move. Sayo takes the strands in her hand, pressing a kiss to them before they fall between her fingers and over Tsugumi’s chest. Sayo pauses to count the loose freckles around the strands with her lips. She’s so beautiful it almost feels wrong to do anything to her. To let someone like Sayo—

“Don’t hold back baby.”

Sayo snaps out of her growing brain haze and finds herself hovering over Tsugumi, “You’re certain?”

“Sayo.” Tsugumi lifts herself up. One hand comes to rest on Sayo’s neck, guiding her face to Tsugumi so Sayo can see the trust glistening in her eyes. Always so wise, so in tune with Sayo’s feelings. The other reaches down and grasps the slick shaft between them. So very in tune. With a hard thrust, Tsugumi grinds it into Sayo.

A surge of electric pressure shoots through Sayo. Every muscle in her body tenses to keep untoward sounds from escaping her lips but still a groan leaks out. Tsugumi kisses her, hand firm and controlling—reminding Sayo that just because she wears the strap doesn’t mean she holds the power.

Tsugumi’s whispers into Sayo’s ear. “I want every part of you.”

Sayo can hear her own heartbeat thundering. She raises her hand to the center of Tsugumi’s chest and pushes her back onto the bed, brown hair fanning out around her. “Tsugumi,” Sayo breaths out unsteadily. “I love you.” She steadies herself with one hand over Tsugumi’s hipbone and, with the smallest nod, aligns their hips and pushes inside again.

She falls over Tsugumi, holding her weight on her elbows. Her breath shudders into Tsugumi’s ear. Tsugumi squirms underneath Sayo as she begins the search for the right rhythm, the one that will erase every thought but ‘more’.

Sayo’s never been a truly creative person—her artistry is built on skill and practice—but Tsugumi brings it out of her. There’s a pang inside of her, a need to worship something so wonderful with song. She’s not quite a muse; artists take from muses they drain them until there’s nothing left and all Sayo wants is to give, give, give. That’s why she marks Tsugumi’s body with teeth and tongue—sucking red-purple circles down her neck to her chest to her breasts. It’s not possession, it’s a memory made tangible. Remember that I love you, each one says, remember my touch when my body is far away.

The frustration becomes the fuel. If there are no words, no music, no deed Sayo can do, perhaps her actions can speak for her.

Tsugumi’s breath shifts with Sayo’s speed, voice pitching in moans and gasps and cries of “Sayo” and “ _More_ ”.

She can tell the angle’s not enough. Tsugumi tries to wiggle her hips, offer more of herself to take but it’s not enough. Sayo pulls out, panting over Tsugumi. Both women struggle to catch their breath before Sayo softly orders, “Turn over.”

Tsugumi nods like she doesn’t trust her voice anymore. She rolls onto her knees, hands clutching the headboard and looking over her shoulder to make sure Sayo hasn’t disappeared in the second their gaze broke.

It seems so foolish that she ever leaves now. How can she ever leave this goddess in her bed who trusts her so much she’ll bear her back without a second thought? But it’s the trust that lets Sayo leave.

Sayo maps out every divot and curve of Tsugumi’s back with her hands. She mouths at Tsugumi’s shoulder, sucking and nipping, until neither of them can stand it any longer. She bites—just harsh enough to possess.

Tsugumi’s back arches with a messy, needy moan and Sayo’s reaches around and remembers why they lay out towels. Wetness drips onto her palm. She prods Tsugumi’s swollen folds with her forefinger, dipping inside. The passage tenses, as does Tsugumi’s body underneath her.

“H-hah, Sayo…”

Sayo pulls away her hand. Her finger glistens in the low light of their bedroom. No sense in making a mess. Sayo brings her fingers to her lips and sucks, locking eyes with Tsugumi to ensure she catches every flick of her tongue. The taste is sharp and familiar, imprinted on Sayo’s tongue.

Tsugumi’s eyes widen and darken at once. Her knees tremble as she whimpers, “Sayo, don’t tease me.”

“Tsugumi.” Sayo winds one arm around Tsugumi and presses her chest flush to Tsugumi’s back. She aligns her lips with the rim of Tsugumi’s ear and smirks as her hand grips the silicon and teases at Tsugumi’s entrance. “You wanted all of me.”

Tsugumi giggles and starts to tease back, “Sayo-saaaaaaa—!” But her voice cracks as Sayo enters her, rocking their bodies forward together with her thrust.

Sayo can play rough, but only in her way, with her arm around Tsugumi and her lips peppering her skin, guiding her with every quickening stroke.

The headboard thunders against the wall. They’re in no state of mind to care about the neighbors. The world is only Tsugumi and Sayo. Tsugumi’s body is something holy that Sayo will worship with lips and hands and rocking hips lifting her love higher and higher with every stroke. She’s a piston for Tsugumi. Only for Tsugumi. Sayo won’t stop until Tsugumi is content.

She is hers.

Tsugumi is getting close. Sayo can hear it in her whimpering pant. Her hand rounds Tsugumi’s shoulder and trails down her side to her hanging breasts, rolling a nipple in her fingers just to hear the desperate gasps it drags out of Tsugumi. She keeps moving, hand spreading over Tsugumi’s belly and dipping around her belly button before going down further to where their bodies meet and part over and over.

Sayo knows what will tip Tsugumi over. She kisses the back of Tsugumi’s sweat soaked neck and waits the length of two more thrusts with her hand nestled in Tsugumi’s dark curls. Then, she finally greets Tsugumi’s clit with the tip of her finger.

Tsugumi cries out so loudly that they surely wake up all of Tokyo. Sayo flicks again, making sure to linger as she rolls over the bud.

Tsugumi’s knees tremble. The only thing she can say is a strangled, “Sayo!”

Sayo works in time with one last thrust, rubbing just as she bottoms out inside Tsugumi and Tsugumi melts. Her back arches into Sayo as she screams out. Sayo presses her ear against Tsugumi’s throat, trying to capture that beautiful music Tsugumi makes as she is made undone.

Tsugumi’s hands fall away from the headboard and cling to Sayo’s arm around her as she collapses. Her body falls slack, held upright only by Sayo’s arm and a little faith. Her eyes grow far and foggy as Sayo runs calming, soothing kisses down her face, her neck, her back, all the while she still throbs around Sayo’s strap.

They fall back onto the bed. Sayo pulls Tsugumi into her arms, still attached at their centers, cradling her with endless praise murmured into her ear. Tsugumi has given her so much and Sayo still longs to give her more. Carefully, she pushes Tsugumi onto her back and crawls on top of her girlfriend again.

“Tsugumi,” Sayo whispers, pushing back sweat matted hair so she can look into her lover’s face. She withdraws to the very edge of Tsugumi’s entrance. “Can you handle one more?”

She struggles to catch her breath, hands fumbling around on Sayo’s back, shoulders and neck until she finally finds Sayo’s cheek. Tsugumi nods with hazy love soaked eyes. “Slowly.”

Sayo covers Tsugumi’s hand with her own, squeezing before pulling it away and pressing it against the bed above her head as she gathers the other alongside it. With clasped hands, Sayo slowly rolls her hips forward and pushes back into Tsugumi.

With every disappearing centimeter, Tsugumi’s moan slowly deepens. She takes it so beautifully, eyes focused on Sayo’s face, hands quivering underneath Sayo’s palms. Her hips still rise to meet Sayo. Despite her exhaustion their bodies still long for each other. There will never be enough, they both know that. Maybe that’s why Sayo knows this is real, after everything they still need more.

Tsugumi gasps when Sayo’s fully sheathed inside. She didn’t let the length linger before and she can tell from how wide Tsugumi’s eyes grow that she feels every part of it. Her mouth opens and closes without sound until Sayo begins to pull out, slower than she entered, and the silence turns into the beautiful noises of her lover already on the edge of falling apart.

The speed might help Tsugumi adjust but each stroke holds the pressing weight of Sayo’s love. If she was a storm before now Sayo is comforting tide washing in over the beach bit by bit, molding the sand a little more with every lap. It doesn’t take long before the wave is overwhelming.

Tsugumi’s head falls to the side as her voice crescendos. “I’m close… Sayo…”

Sayo doesn’t need to be told, though she wants to hear it anyway, but more than that she wants to see. Sayo whines a little from the back of her throat, trying blindly to nuzzle Tsugumi upright. “Tsugumi, please let me see you.”

And sweet Tsugumi could never deny Sayo anything. So she forces her head back and fights to keep her eyes open, to keep that visual link between green and brown. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes. Her vision grows unfocused, but she doesn’t look away. Sayo watches as those brown eyes spill over the edge. She feels the curve of Tsugumi’s back lift away from the mattress, feels the squeeze of their conjoined hands and hears that voice, that precious, precious voice fall into the softest sigh as if she were being gently woken from the most wonderful dream.

“Oh Sayo.”

Sayo pulls her hands away so she can cup her girlfriend’s face and brush away those gentle loving tears with her thumbs. She presses their lips together in one soothing, chaste kiss with the relief of finding a period at the end of a very long sentence. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Very carefully, they pull apart. The harness comes off easily and painlessly, save for the rush of cold air on Sayo’s embarrassingly wet lower half. There’s a list in Sayo’s head of things she needs to clean up, the harness, the towel underneath Tsugumi, the… member, herself, but none of those things matter as much as gathering Tsugumi into her arms and holding her as tight as her dully aching arms can muster. She’ll feel their lovemaking in her hips and shoulders in the morning, but for now the endorphins hide the soreness away.

If only they could burrow into this moment as racing heartbeats slow their syncopation into synchronization. Tsugumi intertwines their hands and pulls Sayo’s knuckles to her lips, kissing each one with lightning lips. Sayo’s body longs to be touched more but Sayo’s mind chides the urge. She’s exhausted Tsugumi, she can’t expect her to work up any energy. Sayo will just sneak off to the bathroom in a moment and wipe herself clean. They have days ahead that can be for her pleasure, tonight is for Tsugu—

“Mmph!” There’s sudden wonderful pressure on Sayo’s groin. It’s barely more than a pet but Sayo is so worked up that just Tsugumi cupping her is enough to make her squirm and gasp. “Tsu-Tsugumi-san?” The honorific squeaks out with her surprise.

“You did so much for me.” Tsugumi looks up at Sayo. Her eyes grow dark again. Their bodies are pressed together so tightly she barely needs to move to let her fingers caress Sayo. They slip between her folds without any resistance.

Sayo wants this. Her body is screaming how much she wants this as she drips onto Tsugumi’s hand but she’s valiant and noble and worse, insecure after all these years. Just a little, just enough to keep her from grinding against Tsugumi’s fingers. Instead she asks, “Are you sure?”

“Sayo,” Tsugumi pulls away her hand and brings her soaked fingers to her lips. She kisses Sayo’s wetness. Sayo would be embarrassed enough at the new shine on Tsugumi’s lips to die if she weren’t so aroused she thinks she’ll die of that first. “I want you.”

Sayo whimpers, uselessly thrusting her hips at the air. She wants to be wanted, only by Tsugumi. Always by Tsugumi.

Tsugumi nibbles along Sayo’s collar bone as her index finger slides up and down Sayo’s slit, never so much as hinting inside her. It only makes it more unbearable. If Tsugumi wants her to beg she’ll beg—Sayo has no pride around Tsugumi, she’s too in love for that. “Please. Please Tsugumi.”

She swallows Sayo’s begging with a kiss. A second finger joins the first and together they part Sayo’s folds. Sayo scrambles at Tsugumi’s back, dulled nails digging into her shoulder blades, as she scissors her fingers teasingly against Sayo’s opening.

Then, with agonizing slowness, Tsugumi enters Sayo. Sayo clutches around those fingers like she’s trying to keep them inside—she is sort of. The idea of Tsugumi leaving her like this makes Sayo’s animal brain panic. She moans in Tsugumi’s mouth as she starts to move until she has to break away and breath, gulping down the air that’s forced out by the strokes of Tsugumi’s fingers.

How she curls them over and over. Sayo could never match Tsugumi on herself so she never tries. It’s more special like this, more special if that’s Tsugumi’s place. All of her body is Tsugumi’s place, her arousal addled brain thinks.

Tsugumi ducks her head down and latches onto one of Sayo’s breasts, suckling so tenderly Sayo could cry. She does. There’s no other way for her emotions to come out, it’s too much for anything but tears.

The fingers inside her are so gentle, so calming. Touch by touch they take away her worries, her pain and place love there instead. Tsugumi writes I love you on every bit of Sayo’s skin.

Sayo cries out because it’s Tsugumi. It’s home. They’re the same thing, always the same. She’s warm, she’s safe, she’s home, she’s Tsugumi, Tsugumi, Tsugumi.

Her vision grows hazy, she can’t see anything but sparks and fireworks. Her body is just sensation after sensation until they all finally rise up at once and—

The world fades back in. The first color is chocolate brown.

“Hi Sayo.” Tsugumi smooths back Sayo’s bangs and cups her cheek as her other hand soothes Sayo below.

“Hello, Tsugumi.” Sayo’s voice sheds rust as she speaks. The world shrinks down to the pinpricks in Tsugumi’s eyes. Sayo smiles and spills the secret she’s somehow held for two months—not quite her speciality. “We won’t be touring again.”

The world widens. Tsugumi pushes up on her arm, looking down at Sayo with breathless hope. “What?”

“No more tours. We decided together. So this is—”

“The last day of your last tour,” She gasps. “My answer is yes.”

“Tsugumi-san?” If Sayo isn’t mistaken, Tsugumi just spoiled days spent practicing with Lisa, trying to build up Sayo’s courage.

“Sorry!” She recoiled with a heavy blush. “I got ahead of myself. Go ahead.”

Sayo reaches into her bedside table and pulls out the small box that has lived in the back for five years. She clutches it tight, then pops it open with her thumb. There’s a ring inside—of course—a cut sapphire set into a rose-gold band. The ring waited for so long to meet its owner. Hopefully.

“Tsugumi-san. Will you marry—”

“Yes.” Tsugumi slaps her hand over her mouth. “Sorry! I did it again. Why don’t you try one more—”

Sayo rolls on top of her girlfriend, her partner—lips to lips—before she can finish rambling. As they kiss, she takes Tsugumi’s right hand and slips the ring onto her third finger. Before Sayo can turn the kiss into another go around, Tsugumi slides her hand between the two of them.

She gasps, “Oh Sayo.” The ring is more beautiful in the light, where it was always meant to be instead of hidden in a box in a drawer. Sayo was right when she picked it out so long ago: it looks like it was made for her hand.

“Still yes?”

Tsugumi kisses her in response, tongue trailing along the roof of Sayo’s mouth until they part. “Always yes.” She blinks back tears. “You’re really done touring?”

“We are, but we can discuss the details later—” Before she can finish, the world whirls around Sayo and she finds herself flat on her back, misty eyed Tsugumi pinning her down. Tsugumi presses her hand over Sayo’s collar. There’s an infinity of force in her touch, Sayo can’t so much as raise her head as long as Tsugumi’s hand stays firm. She’s always powerless in Tsugumi’s hands, though rarely quite so literally. Sayo smiles. “A second wind?”

“I think we might be at my fifth wind by now.” She hides her face in Sayo’s hair with a half nervous giggle. “You bring it out of me…”

“We have all the time we need.” Sayo opens her arms to Tsugumi.

“What if,” Tsugumi’s lips linger on Sayo’s neck, only pulling away to find her lips instead. She smiles, millimeters from Sayo. “I need all of it?”

“Then.” Sayo gazes into her future’s eyes, never more certain of anything in her life. “All the time we want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for joining me on this little journey. I hope it's a little early holiday present for you, something warm as the nights creep in closer. It started as a one shot, this chapter you just read actually, and then it grew and grew as I realized there was a story there to tell. I really love when that happens. Stay safe my friends, happy holidays.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a side project so no promise on when updates will come. To be fair, I can't even keep those promises when I do make them anyway.


End file.
